Christa Pike seeks firing squad, not lethal injection: Inside US executions
Set to be Tennessee’s first female execution in 200 years, before it was stayed at the 11th hour on Wednesday, Pike made an unusual request about how she should die.
A federal appeals court has stayed the execution of Christa Gail Pike, the only woman on the state’s “death row”, US media reported on Wednesday.
Tennessee had been set to execute the first woman in more than 200 years on Wednesday, after the United States Supreme Court rejected a bid to halt it. However, the Sixth Circuit US Court of Appeals intervened at the last minute.
Christa Pike, 50, who was convicted of torturing and killing a classmate when she was 18, was due to die by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, but according to a report by The New York Post, she has asked to be shot by an all-female firing squad instead.
Human rights experts have condemned the decision to continue with the execution at all, but say the Supreme Court can still overturn the stay of execution.
Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who has represented many death row inmates in the past, told Al Jazeera: “Very few women are executed, but fewer still in Tennessee – it has been 200 years. So this is a step back to about 1820.
So why does Pike hope to avoid lethal injection in preference for the firing squad, and how does the US put people to death? Here’s what you need to know:
What was Christa Pike convicted of?
Pike was found guilty of the murder of another young woman she viewed as a romantic rival more than 30 years ago.
In January 1995, Pike, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and 18-year-old Shadolla Peterson lured Colleen Slemmer, 19, into a wooded area and tortured and killed her. All four were students at a Job Corps vocational centre in Knoxville.
The case attracted huge public interest, especially after it was revealed that the attackers had carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, which Shipp later admitted to carving. Pike kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull.
Pike and Shipp confessed and were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996. Pike was sentenced to death; Shipp received life with the possibility of parole.
“Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions,” her lawyers wrote.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has spoken in support of the execution.
What do her lawyers argue?
That she should not be executed at all.
On Wednesday, just hours before Pike’s execution was due to be carried out, a federal appeals court issued an order stating: “The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee determined that it did not have jurisdiction over Christa Pike’s Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6) motion to reopen the judgment denying habeas relief. Therefore, it is ORDERED that execution of the sentence of death upon the movant is STAYED until further order of this court.”
However, the Supreme Court can still overturn this order, Stafford Smith told Al Jazeera. “The Supreme Court has been overturning stays recently,” he added.
Pike’s legal team previously petitioned the governor to commute her sentence to life without parole. It pointed to evidence that her mother drank heavily during pregnancy, impairing Pike’s brain development and her impulse control.
“The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists,” her lawyers wrote.
She would be the only person to be executed in modern-era Tennessee for a crime committed as a teenager.
Her lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, said scientists now understand far more about adolescent brain development and that her sentence was an outlier.
Stafford Smith said: “Christa was just a teenager, and had undergone horrendous abuse as a child. Now she is 50, a totally different person. It is so pointless – will this really make the world a more civilised place?”
Governor Bill Lee has denied clemency, however. A group of United Nations human rights experts has called for her sentence to be commuted.
Why is this case so rare?
The US almost never executes women.
Women account for 18 of the 1,683 people executed since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976 – just more than 1 percent.
Tennessee has executed just 17 people in that time before Wednesday, with Pike the only woman on its death row.
If the execution goes ahead, it will be the state’s first execution of a woman since 1820, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Why does Pike not want a lethal injection?
Her legal team and trauma experts say it could force her to relive abuse she suffered in childhood.
Her clemency petition documents childhood violence, neglect and sexual abuse, including rapes when she was aged 11 and 17. It also cites her diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Sexual violence and trauma experts argue that the procedures around lethal injection would likely trigger severe flashbacks of that abuse.
Her legal team also argues that she has small veins and a blood condition that could make it difficult to place an IV line, a claim the state disputes.
In May, Tennessee prison officials abandoned the execution of another prisoner, Tony Carruthers, after failing to find a suitable vein.
According to The New York Post, Pike’s lawyers said she also fears a painful death by lethal injection.
The paper reported that she wants to be shot by an all-female firing squad, with members of Slemmer’s family among the witnesses.
Tennessee is not among the five states that authorise the firing squad.
In court in August, her lawyers proposed hanging instead, noting it was the method Tennessee last used to execute a woman.
The state opposed that, saying Tennessee has neither the equipment nor the legal authority to carry it out. The judge sided with the state but allowed for the possibility of an all-female execution team.
Tennessee also allows prisoners whose crimes predate January 1999 to choose the electric chair; Pike’s crime took place in 1995.
What rules do different states have?
There are 27 states with the death penalty, although four have placed its use on hold.
Lethal injection is authorised in every state with the death penalty; electrocution in nine states; gas in nine; and the firing squad in five. In Idaho, the firing squad became the primary method in July 2026.
Tennessee authorises lethal injection and electrocution. If both are found unconstitutional, its law allows any constitutional method.
Since 2008, the Supreme Court has required prisoners challenging an execution method to identify a feasible alternative that significantly reduces the risk of severe pain.
In June, a federal judge permanently barred Alabama from executing Jeffery Lee with nitrogen gas, ruling that it violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
She found his proposed alternative, the firing squad, feasible.
What are the different methods?
The US has used five: lethal injection, electrocution, gas, the firing squad and hanging.
Lethal injection accounts for 1,491 executions since 1976, while electrocution has been used 163 times. Gas has been used 19 times, with Alabama and Louisiana the only states to have used it.
In nitrogen executions, a mask is placed over the prisoner’s face, and the air they breathe is replaced with pure nitrogen.
The firing squad, the method Pike reportedly wants, has been used just six times since 1976.
Hanging, once a primary method, is not currently authorised in any state.
Why are execution methods so controversial?
Because none of them reliably work as intended, many experts say.
The Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution bars “cruel and unusual punishments”. But the Supreme Court has made challenges to the death penalty harder to win. It has ruled that proving a method risks severe pain is not enough; prisoners must also identify a feasible alternative that significantly reduces that risk.
Lethal injection depends on finding a usable vein. If the drugs go into a muscle instead, or the needle clogs, the prisoner can suffer extreme pain.
In 2017, legal challenges in Arkansas cited botched lethal injections in Oklahoma and Arizona.
Meanwhile, the electric chair does not always kill with the first jolt. If the prisoner’s heart is still beating, another jolt must be applied.
An autopsy of Mikal Mahdi, executed by firing squad in South Carolina in 2025, found that only two of three bullets hit him, and neither struck his heart.
A miscalculated hanging can mean death by slow strangulation.
Witnesses said Kenneth Smith, the first person executed with nitrogen gas, appeared conscious and writhed for several minutes.
