Tennessee is dusting off its lethal injection protocols and setting dates for four death row inmates, including the state’s only woman on death row, in a move that’s sure to reignite debates over justice and morality.
The Associated Press reported that the Tennessee Supreme Court, in a decision made in Nashville this week, has slated executions for Christa Pike, Tony Carruthers, Gary Sutton, and Anthony Hines, marking a significant step after a three-year pause in state executions.
Let’s start with Christa Pike, convicted at just 18 for the horrific 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Knoxville Job Corps student, in a crime that shocked even the hardest hearts with its brutality.
Pike, along with her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, stabbed and beat Slemmer on the University of Tennessee’s Agricultural campus, carving a pentagram into the victim’s chest and reportedly keeping a piece of her skull as a gruesome trophy.
Shipp, hailing from Memphis, got life with parole possibility, while Pike’s path only darkened with a 2004 conviction for attempting to strangle another inmate, tacking on 25 more years to her sentence.
Her attorneys have pleaded for clemency, citing her youth at the time of the crime, a childhood marred by abuse and neglect, and diagnoses of bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders—arguments that tug at sympathy but don’t erase the savagery of her actions.
Then there’s Tony Carruthers, convicted in 1996 for the cold-blooded murders of Marcellos Anderson, his mother Delois, and Frederick Tucker in 1994, allegedly in a bid to dominate the drug trade in their Memphis neighborhood.
Carruthers, who represented himself at trial after clashing with court-appointed lawyers, even threatening some, offers a stark reminder that justice doesn’t always come with a polished defense—sometimes it’s just raw and messy.
Anthony Hines, convicted of fatally stabbing motel maid Katherine Jean Jenkins in Kingston Springs back in 1985, and Gary Sutton, sentenced for the 1992 shotgun killing of Tommy Griffin after already being tied to Griffin’s sister’s murder, round out this grim quartet.
Sutton’s legal team insists he’s innocent in Griffin’s death, with a statement claiming, “There is no motive for the crime.”
They’ve also pointed fingers at discredited evidence from a state medical examiner who lost his license, casting a shadow over the conviction—yet the court’s calendar marches on, unmoved by these pleas for reconsideration.
Meanwhile, Tennessee’s execution machine sputtered for three years until resuming in May 2025, after revelations that lethal injection drugs weren’t properly tested for purity and potency, a scandal that saw state officials admit to false testimony under oath.
An independent review confirmed that none of the drugs used in seven executions since 2018 passed full testing, raising serious ethical questions about whether the state can carry out death sentences without botching the process—literally.
With Harold Nichols already scheduled for execution by an earlier 2025 order for the 1988 rape and murder of Karen Pulley, and Donald Middlebrooks’ execution on hold pending a federal challenge to these protocols, Tennessee’s justice system is walking a tightrope between retribution and potential cruelty.
While the left might cry foul over capital punishment as a relic of a less “enlightened” era, let’s not forget the victims—Slemmer, Griffin, Jenkins, and others—whose lives were stolen in acts of unthinkable violence, leaving families forever scarred; justice delayed shouldn’t mean justice denied, even if the process isn’t perfect.