Tennessee Gov. Rejects Clemency for Christa Pike as Execution Looms

Governor Bill Lee has denied a clemency request from death‑row inmate Christa Pike, scheduled to be executed on September 30 by lethal injection.

Pike, 50, was 18 when she and boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp brutally beat, tortured and killed 19‑year‑old Colleen Slemmer at a job‑training camp for troubled teens in 1995. The case became a media spectacle, featuring satanic symbols and graphic details.

Her attorneys have filed a petition with the US Supreme Court in hopes of a last‑minute reprieve, arguing that an 18‑year‑old brain should not be subject to the death penalty and that Pike’s documented history of sexual abuse, neglect and mental illness merits a commutation to life in prison.

If carried out, Pike would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years and the first person in the modern death‑penalty era executed for a crime committed as a teenager.