NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The only woman currently sentenced to death in Tennessee has filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s revised lethal injection execution protocol.

Christa Gail Pike filed suit in Davidson County Chancery Court on Jan. 8. Pike, 49, has been on death row since 1996. She contends that the new execution protocol, which relies on one drug instead of three, violates the U.S. and Tennessee constitutions, in part because of Pike’s “unique medical conditions.”

The new protocol, which went into effect in December 2024, relies on pentobarbital to induce respiratory and cardiac arrest. Between 2018 and 2020, Tennessee put inmates to death using a three-drug cocktail.

According to court documents, Pike’s attorneys argued that the new protocol“is plagued with the same issues that have marked botched executions for decades: secrecy, intentional omission, inattention to detail, and untrained and unlicensed prison personnel attempting to fill a medical role.”

“Because of these failures, the new protocol is sure or very likely to result in unnecessary and superadded pain and suffering, terror, and disgrace.”

Pike is scheduled for execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sept. 30. She currently is on death row at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville.

Pike was convicted of the Jan. 12, 1995, murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. Pike, who was 18 at the time, and Slemmer were participating in a Knoxville job-training program for troubled teens.

According to court filings, Pike believed that Slemmer was attempting to “steal” her boyfriend.

Prosecutors argued that Pike hit Slemmer over the head with asphalt, dragged her into some nearby woods and then tortured her before cutting her throat with a box cutter.

Pike was also convicted of the 2004 attempted murder of a female inmate when the prison was evacuated during a fire.

Pike’s attorneys cited Pike’s youth at the time of the murder and her “horrible childhood” that involved sexual abuse and neglect.

According to the lawsuit, Pike has experienced thrombocytopenia — a blood condition — along with bipolar disorder, PTSD and “small veins that make insertion of a needle difficult.”

Because of Pike’s blood condition, pentobarbital would cause “bloody froth” in her lungs, the filing states.

“This is death by drowning in one’s own blood,” Pike’s attorneys contended in the lawsuit.

Pike was the youngest woman sentenced to death in the modern era of U.S. executions, the Nashville Banner reported.

The last woman to be exe­cut­ed in the United States was Amber McLaughlin, who was put to death by lethal injec­tion in Missouri in January 2023. She is believed to be the first transgender woman to be executed in the United States.

Tennessee last executed a woman in 1820. According to data compiled by the U.S. Supreme Court, Martin Eve -- sometimes named in records as Eve Martin -- was hanged as an accessory to murder.

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