The execution of Christa Pike, who was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in about 200 years, was halted by a federal appeals court on Wednesday, about an hour before she was due to receive a lethal injection.
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit granted a last-minute request to stay Pike’s execution, ordering that it remain halted ‘until further order of this court.’
The court said it would review whether allegations that Pike suffered sexual abuse and rape as a child were fully considered during the proceedings that led to her death sentence.
‘The court has stayed this, recognising the serious concerns about Christa’s scheduled execution,’ Pike’s attorney said.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to be executed at 10 a.m. Wednesday, September 30, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Execution witnesses had already gathered at the facility when the court issued the order at about 9 a.m. CDT.
It was not immediately clear whether Tennessee’s attorney general would challenge the decision or how long the stay would last. Journalists left messages seeking comment with a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office.
*Pike’s death sentence
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time of the killing.
Prosecutors said Pike, who feared Slemmer was attempting to take her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on January 12, 1995, where she cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt.
Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted in connection with the killing. Shipp, who was 17 at the time, has acknowledged carving a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into Slemmer’s body.
The case attracted widespread attention during a period when fears surrounding alleged Satanic activity were prominent in the US. The circumstances of the killing also included a pentagram carved into Slemmer’s body.
Shipp received a life sentence with the possibility of parole, while Pike was sentenced to death.
Pike does not dispute that she participated in the killing. However, her supporters have argued that her age, mental health and history of severe sexual abuse should have been given greater consideration.
Her attorneys have also argued that her death sentence was an outlier because other people sentenced to death in Tennessee for crimes committed at age 18 have had their sentences vacated.
Pike’s legal team had sought to stop the execution at multiple levels. The US Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request from her attorneys to halt the execution, while Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee denied her clemency request on Monday.
In a statement included in her clemency petition, Pike said she had struggled to understand the consequences of her actions.
‘I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done,’ Pike said. ‘Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.’
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, had supported carrying out Pike’s execution, saying she had waited decades to see the sentence enforced.
‘Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,’ Martinez said in a telephone interview.
Martinez said a group had raised money to enable her and her husband to travel from Florida to witness the execution.
*Rare execution of a woman
Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre. Maher noted that historical records are incomplete, making it difficult to establish the precise details of the last execution of a woman in the state.
Executions of women remain uncommon in the United States. Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed nationwide, accounting for about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre.
Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin in 2023 for a 2003 killing. McLaughlin was also believed to be the first transgender woman executed in the United States.
In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first execution of a female federal inmate in nearly seven decades.