Supreme Court Rejects Last‑ditch Appeal, Christa Pike Set for Execution

The United States Supreme Court declined to halt the lethal‑injection execution scheduled for Tennessee inmate Christa Pike on Wednesday morning. The decision means Pike will be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Pike, 50, was convicted in 1996 for the brutal murder of 19‑year‑old Colleen Slemmer. She was sentenced to death after beating, torturing and killing Slemmer at a job‑training camp for troubled teens. Pike was only 18 when the crime was committed.

In a last‑minute effort, Pike’s attorneys filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking a stay of execution. The high court rejected the request, leaving the death sentence in place. Governor Bill Lee had already denied a clemency appeal, stating he would not intervene in the state’s execution schedule.

The case has drawn attention to the rarity of female executions: of the 1,663 men executed in the United States since the 1970s, only 18 women have served their sentences. Nk, Pike was the youngest person on death row at the time of her incarceration.

Pike’s defense argues that an 18‑year‑old brain is not that of an adult, and therefore she should not be sent to death. They contend that she was too young to be held criminally responsible and that the case was driven by sensational media coverage, including the discovery of a pentagram—a symbol associated with some Satanic groups—carved into Slemmer’s chest.

Additional reporting by Sareen Habeshian.

Clarification 29 September: This article originally referred to a pentagram as “a symbol of Satanic ritual”. The wording has been amended to clarify that the symbol was an inverted pentagram and that such symbols are associated with some Satanic groups.