THE 18 WOMEN EXECUTED IN AMERICA — AND WHY CHRISTA PIKE’S FAILED EXECUTION HAS RENEWED ATTENTION ON DEATH ROW

Christa Pike was supposed to become the 19th woman executed in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Instead, the 50-year-old Tennessee prisoner survived two doses of pentobarbital during an unprecedented execution attempt that ended with her being taken to hospital.

The failed execution has once again drawn attention to the small number of women who have been put to death in the United States — and to the very different cases that have brought women onto death row.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 18 women have been executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Women account for only a small fraction of all executions during that period.

Pike was scheduled to become the 19th.

She was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Job Corps training centre in Knoxville, Tennessee.

CHRISTA PIKE — THE EXECUTION THAT DID NOT END

Pike was 18 when Slemmer was killed.

Prosecutors said Pike, her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson lured Slemmer to a wooded area near the University of Tennessee.

Pike and Shipp were convicted of first-degree murder.

Shipp was 17 at the time and received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Pike received a death sentence.

The case attracted enormous attention because of the brutality of the killing and evidence that a pentagram had been carved into Slemmer’s body.

Pike remained on death row for nearly three decades.

Her attorneys later argued that her childhood was marked by severe abuse and sexual violence and that evidence concerning her traumatic upbringing and mental-health history had not been adequately presented during sentencing.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee rejected her request for clemency on September 28, 2026.

Her execution was scheduled for September 30.

But it did not go as planned.

After the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Tennessee to proceed, officials administered pentobarbital.

A second dose was subsequently given when the first did not result in death.

Pike remained alive.

Witnesses reported hearing her breathing and later what sounded like prolonged snoring. Her lawyers filed an emergency motion seeking to halt the procedure and provide medical treatment.

She was eventually taken from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution by ambulance and transported to hospital.

Her attorneys later said she was in critical condition and receiving medical care.

Tennessee officials said the state’s established execution protocol had been followed.

Gov. Bill Lee subsequently ordered a third-party review and postponed the state’s remaining scheduled executions for 2026.

WHY WOMEN ARE SO RARELY EXECUTED

Pike’s case has highlighted how unusual executions of women are in the United States.

Since 1976, hundreds of people have been executed, but only 18 have been women.

That represents just over 1% of all executions during the modern era of capital punishment.

The relatively small number means every execution of a woman tends to attract significant attention, particularly when the case involves unusual circumstances or raises questions about sentencing and mitigation.

The women executed since 1976 have also been convicted in widely different circumstances.

Some cases involved killings of spouses or family members.

Others involved multiple victims or crimes committed alongside male accomplices.

One of the most widely known cases was that of Aileen Wuornos, who was executed in Florida in 2002 after being convicted of killing several men.

Her case later became the subject of books, documentaries and the Academy Award-winning film Monster.

AILEEN WUORNOS

Wuornos was one of the most notorious women to receive a death sentence in the modern era.

She was convicted of killing men in Florida between 1989 and 1990.

Wuornos eventually pleaded guilty to six murders.

She was executed by lethal injection in Florida on October 9, 2002.

Her case attracted international attention, in part because of her troubled background and her claims concerning the circumstances of the killings.

Her life and crimes were later dramatized in the 2003 film Monster, in which Charlize Theron portrayed Wuornos.

KIMBERLY MCCARTHY

Another notable case was Kimberly McCarthy, who was executed in Texas in 2013.

McCarthy was convicted of killing 71-year-old retired professor Dorothy Booth during a robbery.

She became the first woman executed in Texas in nearly three years when the state carried out the sentence by lethal injection.

Her case also attracted attention because of the lengthy appeals process surrounding her conviction.

KELLY GISSENDANER

Kelly Gissendaner was executed in Georgia in 2015 after being convicted of participating in the killing of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner.

Prosecutors said she plotted with her lover, Gregory Owen, to kill her husband.

Owen carried out the killing, while Gissendaner was convicted of murder because of her role in the plan.

She was executed by lethal injection after multiple appeals and clemency requests.

Her case became particularly controversial because Owen, who physically carried out the killing, received a life sentence while Gissendaner received the death penalty.

LISA MONTGOMERY

Lisa Montgomery was executed by the federal government in January 2021.

Her case was unusual because she was the first woman executed by the U.S. federal government in nearly seven decades.

Montgomery had been convicted of killing a pregnant woman in Missouri in 2004 and taking her unborn baby.

Her lawyers had argued that severe childhood trauma and serious mental illness should have prevented her execution.

She was executed by lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.

THE SMALL NUMBER OF WOMEN ON DEATH ROW

Women make up only a small percentage of people sentenced to death in the United States.

Their cases often generate separate legal and social debates concerning factors such as domestic abuse, coercion, mental illness, childhood trauma, gender and the role of accomplices.

But each case is legally distinct.

A death sentence depends on the specific evidence and circumstances surrounding an individual conviction, and the cases of women on death row cannot simply be treated as one category.

WHY PIKE’S CASE IS DIFFERENT

Pike’s case has attracted particular attention because of her age when the crime occurred.

She was 18 years old when Slemmer was killed.

The Death Penalty Information Center has noted that Tennessee has not sentenced another 18-year-old to death since Pike.

Her attorneys have argued that developments in understanding adolescent development and the effects of childhood trauma should be considered when evaluating her sentence decades later.

Pike has acknowledged responsibility for her role in Slemmer’s death while asking Tennessee to replace her death sentence with life imprisonment without parole.

Those arguments were rejected at the clemency stage by Gov. Lee, who declined to intervene.

COLLEEN SLEMMER’S FAMILY HAS WAITED MORE THAN 30 YEARS

At the centre of the case remains Colleen Slemmer.

She was 19 when she was killed.

Her mother, May Martinez, travelled to Tennessee to witness Pike’s scheduled execution after more than three decades of waiting.

Instead, she watched Pike survive.

Martinez later told The Associated Press that she did not believe justice had been achieved for her daughter.

The failed execution therefore created another painful chapter for Slemmer’s family, whose lives have been shaped by the 1995 killing for more than 30 years.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT FOR CHRISTA PIKE?

The failed execution has created a new legal situation.

Tennessee’s protocol provides for a second set of syringes if an inmate has not died after the first set.

However, the protocol does not clearly establish what should happen if the prisoner remains alive after the second set.

Pike’s attorneys are now seeking to prevent another attempt to execute her.

Meanwhile, Tennessee’s governor has ordered an independent review into what happened inside the execution chamber.

All remaining scheduled executions in Tennessee for 2026 have been postponed while the review takes place.

It is not yet clear whether Tennessee will seek another execution date for Pike, what method could be used, or how the courts will address the unprecedented circumstances surrounding the failed attempt.

A CASE THAT HAS CHANGED AGAIN

For nearly 30 years, Christa Pike’s name has been associated with one of Tennessee’s most closely followed death-penalty cases.

She was sentenced to death at 20 for a crime committed at 18.

She remained on death row for decades.

And on September 30, 2026, she came within minutes of becoming the 19th woman executed in the United States during the modern death-penalty era.

Instead, she survived.

Now she is in hospital, Tennessee is reviewing its execution procedures, and the courts will have to determine what happens next.

But amid the extraordinary developments surrounding Pike, one name remains at the centre of the case:

Colleen Slemmer.

She was 19 years old when her life ended in January 1995.

More than three decades later, her family continues to remember her — while the legal consequences of her death remain unresolved.