Christa Pike Refuses Final Meal Before Tennessee Execution

A TikTok by kaniyahavarie under the title “Christa Pike RefusesHer Final Meal” The clip carries the channel’s own tags for breaking news and true crime; the account’s description frames the post around the inmate’s decision not to choose a final meal.

According to the Tennessee Department of Correction, Christa Pike declined to select a last meal. Inmates are typically given $20 to spend on one, The Tennessean has reported. WKRN noted that Darrel Hines, executed in August 2026, had requested fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, coleslaw, fries, biscuits, chocolate chip cake and sweet tea. Pike’s refusal came as the state still planned to provide a meal.

Pike, 50, was scheduled for lethal injection at 10 a.m. on Sept. 30, 2026, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. She was convicted in March 1996 of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time of the killing. She was later convicted of attempted first-degree murder for strangling another inmate with a shoestring in 2001. Governor Bill Lee denied clemency. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop the execution.

If the sentence had been carried out, she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, since the hanging of Eve Martin, and the 19th woman put to death nationwide since 1976. Eighteen of the 1,683 executions recorded since that year have been of women. Pike’s lawyers, in a statement to Fox 17, said, “Moving ahead with her execution puts the State of Tennessee on singular footing.” They added, “Christa will be the first person Tennessee executes in the modern death penalty era who was a teenager at the time of the offense, and the first woman executed by the state in more than 200 years.”

May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, told WKRN, “Maybe now finally we have the justice.” She said, “It may not bring my daughter back but it might save another person from getting killed because she will do it again.” Execution witnesses, including Martinez, had gathered at the jail when a halt order arrived.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a stay around 9 a.m. CT Wednesday, about an hour before the scheduled time. Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch described the action as a “short stay.” First filings reached the docket around 7:20 p.m. Tuesday; 171 additional pages followed, The Tennessean reported. Pike had earlier asked for an all-female firing squad, citing post-traumatic stress disorder from abuse by men. Her lawyer Stephen Ferrell said lethal injection administered by men “will increase the likelihood that an 8th Amendment violation will occur.” He said, “There is an increased risk of pain and suffering.”