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“I was a mentally ill 18 yr. old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I effected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think that someone as loving and compassionate as myself had the ability to commit such a crime.”
Appeals kept case alive for decades
Now 49, Pike remains Tennessee’s only female death row inmate “and the only person executed in the state for a crime committed at age 18, 19, or 20 in the modern death penalty era,” the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reports.
If her execution proceeds on Sept. 30, 2026, she will become the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820 and only the fourth woman ever put to death by the state. The last woman executed in Tennessee, according to the DPIC, was Martin Eve (also documented as Eve Martin), who was hanged in 1820 after being convicted as an accessory to murder.
Alleged ‘deep remorse’
For years, Pike’s attorneys have pointed to her age at the time of the crime, along with years of abuse and mental illness they say jurors never fully understood.
“Christa’s childhood was fraught with years of physical and sexual abuse and neglect,” her legal team said in a statement to USA Today. “With time and treatment for bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders, which were not diagnosed until years later, Christa has become a thoughtful woman with deep remorse for her crime.”
Victim’s mother wants Pike ‘put down’
Despite the arguments, the victim’s mother has never changed her position and wants to see Pike “put down.”
“What I want to see from the judge right now would be to get a date and put her down, instead of waiting another year or another day,” she told WBIR-TV in 2021.
“There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was. Honestly, my heart breaks every single day because…I keep reliving it and reliving it and I can’t anymore. And I want this to happen before I die. Otherwise, nobody will see justice.”
‘Torturous execution’”’
With Pike’s execution date approaching, her attorney, Stephen Ferrell, is asking Tennessee officials to reconsider moving forward under the state’s current lethal injection protocol.
The request follows the failed May 21 execution attempt of death row inmate Tony Carruthers, whose execution was halted after prison staff were unable to establish the required backup IV line, WSMV reports. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee later granted Carruthers – sentenced to death for a 1994 triple murder – a one-year reprieve.
Ferrell argues Pike faces similar risks because of her medical condition.