Tennessee is once again moving toward one of the most closely watched death penalty cases in the state’s modern history, and this time the legal fight is centered not only on whether Christa Gail Pike should die, but on how the state plans to do it.
As WBIR reporter Ellis Rold explained in his video report, Pike, now the only woman on death row in Tennessee, is suing state officials ahead of her scheduled September 2026 execution. According to Rold, Pike argues that the state’s lethal injection process could cause her severe suffering because of her health problems, and she also says her Buddhist faith prevents her from choosing the alternative of electrocution.
That legal fight is unfolding against a much larger and darker backdrop. If Tennessee carries out the sentence, Pike would become the first woman executed in the state in more than 200 years, a point The Tennessean’s Evan Mealins highlighted in his earlier reporting on the case…