Christa Pike is about to become the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than 200 years — but carrying out a death sentence can come with a price many people may not expect.
Pike, now 50, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on September 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
Her execution is scheduled for 10 a.m. CT.
Inside her final hours
Pike has now been transferred to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution ahead of her scheduled execution. The facility will remain under restricted access as preparations continue. Her final meal is scheduled to be served at midnight, although officials have confirmed that Pike has chosen not to request one.
By 8 a.m. on execution day, the injection team will prepare the medications and equipment. Witnesses, including members of Colleen Slemmer’s family, are expected to arrive before 9:15 a.m.
At 10 a.m., Pike will be taken to the execution chamber and secured to a gurney. Medical equipment and IV lines will be put in place before the final procedures begin.
Around 10:10 a.m., the warden will confirm that no last-minute stay has been granted, offer Pike an opportunity to make a final statement and then give the signal for the execution to proceed.
Afterward, a physician will determine whether Pike has died, and the warden will formally declare the sentence carried out.
How much does it actually cost taxpayers to pursue a death sentence?
While the focus has largely been on Pike’s upcoming execution, there is another question surrounding the death penalty that often receives far less attention:
Legal experts say capital punishment cases can become significantly more expensive than cases resulting in life imprisonment, largely because of the additional lawyers, expert witnesses and extensive appeals required.
Don Bosch, a Tennessee attorney who has worked on seven capital punishment cases, explained that defendants facing the death penalty receive two court-appointed lawyers, compared with one in other cases.
Psychological and medical experts can also add substantially to the bill.
“It’s more expensive to seek the death penalty as a state because of the necessary layers of appeals,” Bosch told WBIR.
$600,000 in legal fees
And there is another reason those appeals matter.
“Remember, death is the one punishment that you can’t correct after implementation,” he said.
Tennessee has not provided comprehensive data comparing the cost of capital punishment with life imprisonment since 2004, making the exact taxpayer cost difficult to establish.
However, estimates from previous years suggest the figure can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars before an execution even takes place.
In 2016, state Sen. Richard Briggs said Tennessee was spending $600,000 in legal fees before even reaching the execution stage.
Bosch has previously estimated that taking a capital case from criminal charges all the way to execution can cost 10 to 30 times more than sentencing someone to life in prison.
Cost an average of $3.07 million
The high cost of pursuing the death penalty is not unique to Tennessee.
In Texas, an analysis by The Dallas Morning News found that a death-penalty prosecution cost about $2.3 million — roughly three times the estimated cost of keeping someone in a maximum-security prison for 40 years.
A study in Washington state reached a similar conclusion. Researchers at Seattle University found that death-penalty cases cost an average of $3.07 million, compared with $2.01 million for cases where prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
And in Maryland, researchers estimated that the state’s death-penalty system cost taxpayers about $186 million more between 1978 and 1999 — despite only five executions taking place during that period.
The figures vary from state to state, but they highlight why the financial cost of capital punishment has remained part of the broader debate over the death penalty.
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