Execution date set for only woman on Tennessee's death row
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The state Supreme Court this week set execution dates for four inmates, including Christa Gail Pike, the only woman on Tennessee's death row.
The latest: The court set the next wave of executions in a series of orders on Tuesday.
- Tony V. Carruthers will be executed on May 21, 2026.
- Anthony Darrell Dugard Hines will be executed on Aug. 13, 2026.
- Pike will be executed on Sept. 30, 2026.
- Gary Wayne Sutton will be executed on Dec. 3, 2026.
Zoom out: The court previously set a Dec. 11, 2025, execution date for Harold Wayne Nichols.
The big picture: Tennessee executions are moving forward at a steady clip in Tennessee after a years-long pause.
- Gov. Bill Lee previously halted executions in 2022 after an investigation revealed prison officials were breaking their own lethal injection rules.
- Executions resumed earlier this year under a new lethal injection protocol.
- Lethal injection is the primary form of execution in Tennessee. Inmates sentenced for a crime committed before 1999 can choose the electric chair.
Zoom in: Pike, who is now 49, was sentenced to death for first-degree murder. She brutally killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, in 1995 in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time of the murder.
- Both women were students at Knoxville Job Corps. Pike and two others were charged with beating and torturing Slemmer to death.
- One co-defendant pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and another was convicted of murder and sentenced to life.
- In 2004, Pike was convicted of attempted murder after she attacked another inmate while behind bars.
If Pike's execution moves forward as scheduled, the Tennessean reports, she will be the first Tennessee woman put to death in more than 200 years.