The Tennessee Supreme Court this week granted the state's request to execute a female inmate for the first time in more than 200 years, ordering 49-year-old Christa Gail Pike to be put to death for the 1995 torture and murder of a fellow member of Job Corps, a training program for troubled teens.

The high court ordered Pike's punishment to be carried out on Sept. 30, 2026, reasoning that she failed to show there were extenuating circumstances that warranted her being issued a certificate of commutation in accordance with state law. The execution will take place at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, where most of the state's death row inmates are housed.

Pike was 18 when she, along with her two co-defendants, brutally murdered 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, with Pike k

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