US Supreme Court rejects Pike’s request to delay execution in Tennessee
Fedir Kryshtovskyi30
September
2026
13:04
The US Supreme Court rejected Christa Pike’s request to delay her execution. She is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday at the Riverbend maximum-security prison in Nashville, Tennessee, Daily Maverick reports. If the sentence is carried out, Pike will become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries.
The 1995 murder case
Pike is now 50 years old. In January 1995, when she was 18, she, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and another participant lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer into a wooded area. Slemmer was her fellow student at the Job Corps vocational center in Knoxville.
According to testimony at trial, Pike considered Slemmer a rival over her relationship with Shipp. Pike and Shipp confessed to the murder, and the following year they were found guilty of first-degree murder. Pike was sentenced to death, while Shipp received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.
The third defendant, Shadolla Peterson, who was 18 at the time of the murder, acted as a lookout. He testified for the prosecution and received probation.
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Clemency request
Pike’s lawyers asked Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In a 226-page petition, they cited the abuse, neglect and sexual violence she experienced in childhood, as well as bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosed while in prison.
The governor denied clemency. The defense said their client is remorseful, receives treatment and helps other incarcerated women. The victim’s mother, Mae Martinez, supported carrying out the sentence.
Pike is the only woman among those sentenced to death in Tennessee. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976, 18 women have been executed out of 1,683 people whose death sentences were carried out nationwide.
