The Stones Were Put Down: A Christian Plea for Christa Pike

On the night of 30 September 2026, the State of Tennessee tried to kill Christa Pike, and failed.

She had been sentenced to death for a 1995 murder, and was taken to hospital after surviving a double dose of the drug Tennessee uses to execute prisoners. Witnesses described a long, disordered night. It reportedly took close to an hour to find a vein, and once the drug was finally given, she could still be heard snoring when the chamber’s microphone was cut off more than an hour into the attempt. By the following night, her lawyers reported that she was intubated, on a ventilator and unconscious, her arms swollen, burned and blistered.

None of this came as a surprise. Before the execution, Pike’s lawyers had argued that her small, fragile veins and a blood disorder, thrombocytosis, made lethal injection dangerous. The warning was heard and set aside.

Against every expectation, she lived. On 6 October her attorneys said she was conscious and speaking while receiving critical medical care, though she remains handcuffed and shackled to her hospital bed. Her medical prognosis remains unclear, as does whether the state will seek a new execution date.

This article is not a retelling of her crime. It asks a question that has been put to Christians before: what now?

First, Colleen

Any honest plea for mercy has to begin with the person who received none.

In 1995, Christa Pike killed Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps. Colleen was nineteen. She should be in her fifties now. Her mother, May Martinez, travelled to Nashville to witness the execution, and afterwards she said: “I didn’t get justice for my daughter.”

We do not dismiss that grief, and we do not ask her to stop feeling it. A plea for Christa’s life is not a claim that Colleen’s life mattered less. It is a claim that the answer to one irreplaceable death is not a second one, and certainly not one that has now been attempted and botched.

We will not soften Christa’s record either. Years into her sentence, in 2004, she was convicted of attempted murder after attacking another inmate. This memorial does not look at people through a pink lens. Mercy that only works for the blameless isn’t mercy.

The girl before the crime

Christa Pike was eighteen when she killed. Her lawyers have documented a childhood of physical and sexual abuse and neglect, and argued that her youth, that history, and her later diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder should weigh against her execution.

Her sentence also stands apart from those of the people she acted with. Her boyfriend at the time, Tadaryl Shipp, received life with the possibility of parole, while the third participant testified against Pike and was given probation. And in Tennessee, of the eight teenagers sentenced to death over the last fifty years, seven had their death sentences vacated and are now serving life. She is the one who remains.

In her clemency petition, Christa wrote about what she had done in words that do not ask for excuses: “I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend.” She has never denied her role in Colleen’s killing, and has said it took her years to fully understand the consequences of what she did.

What Scripture says about a life like hers

The first murder in the Bible is followed by a strange act of protection. When Cain kills his brother Abel, God does not take Cain’s life. Instead, “the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him” (Genesis 4:15). From the beginning of Scripture, the guilty are still under God’s protection.

Through the prophet Ezekiel, God speaks even more plainly: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11). This is a God who wants the guilty to live and change, not to die.

Then there is the scene in John’s Gospel that fits this case uncomfortably well. A woman is brought before Jesus, guilty under the law, and her accusers are ready to kill her. Jesus does not argue that the law is wrong. He says: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:7). One by one, they put the stones down and walk away.

Tennessee picked up its stones on 30 September. By some grace no one planned, they did not land. The question for Christians now is whether we pick them up again.

Mercy is not a reward

Some will say Christa Pike has not earned mercy. They are right, and that is the point. In Christian teaching, mercy is never earned; if it were, it would be wages. Paul writes that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8), not after we had made ourselves worthy.

Mercy also does not depend on Christa sharing our faith. Before her execution, the courts considered whether she should be permitted a Buddhist adviser at her side. The mercy we ask for her is not payment for a conversion. It is what Christians are commanded to give: “I was in prison, and ye came unto me” (Matthew 25:36).

The Catholic Church has stated this formally. Since 2018, the Catechism has taught that the death penalty is inadmissible, because it attacks the inviolability and dignity of the person. Many Protestant voices have said the same, often after sitting with people on death row and seeing the image of God that remains in them.

This memorial has written before about grace reaching people in the places society considers beyond it, including prison. Grace is not a reward. It is a gift that refuses to give up on anyone.

What happens now

After the failed attempt, Governor Bill Lee called it “deeply disturbing”, halted further executions for the rest of the year and ordered an independent review. Tennessee’s prison commissioner stepped down amid national backlash. But a pause is not mercy. Before 30 September, the governor had already denied Christa’s request for clemency and upheld her sentence.

He can still change his mind. Under the Tennessee Constitution, the governor alone has the authority to commute her death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That would not set her free. As her lawyers have argued, it would continue to hold her accountable for the rest of her natural life.

Strapped to the gurney that night, Christa described herself as at peace. Days earlier she had written: “Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace.” Peace is hers already. What she needs from us is mercy.

Please sign the petition asking that Christa Pike’s sentence be commuted to life in prison:
👉 https://www.mercyforchrista.org/petition

Pray for Christa, who is still recovering from wounds the state gave her. Pray for May Martinez and Colleen’s family, who have carried thirty-one years of grief. And pray for the man who holds the power to put the stones down for good.

“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matthew 5:7)