Christa Pike , the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on September 30, 2026. However, the planned execution drew attention from the United Nations human rights experts, as they called on US authorities to stop it.
Pike, then 18, and two other teenagers lured Slemmer to a secluded area, where she was beaten, stabbed and killed, according to court records.
Prosecutors said Pike later kept part of the victim’s skull as a trophy. In a statement issued Monday, UN experts urged both the US federal government and the State of Tennessee to halt the execution, arguing that Pike’s nearly three decades on death row, much of it in isolation, amounts to torture under international law. Pike’s then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and another participant, Shadolla Peterson, were also convicted for their roles in the crime. However, neither received a death sentence.
Pike has spent most of the last three decades in solitary confinement because she is the only woman sentenced to death in Tennessee, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
They said the state lacked a dedicated women’s death row facility, hence leading to her confinement in a segregation unit intended for inmates with severe mental illness or those considered safety risks. The experts said those conditions, combined with the long wait before execution and constant awareness of her impending death, amount to torture. “The extraordinary duration of Pike’s isolation on death row… amounts to torture,” the experts said in their statement.
The UN experts argue that Pike’s case raises serious human rights concerns.
