Federal Appeals Court Halts Tennessee Execution of Christa Pike

A federal appeals court has granted a temporary stay of execution for Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike, halting the lethal injection just under two hours before it was scheduled to take place. The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals made the intervention on Wednesday while it reviews Pike’s legal argument that evidence regarding her history of childhood sexual abuse was not adequately considered during her sentencing.

Tennessee authorities promptly petitioned the US Supreme Court to lift the stay and permit the execution to proceed. Pike, aged 50, was set to be put to death at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Had the execution gone forward, she would have become the first woman executed by the state in over two centuries.

Pike was convicted for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville vocational center. At the time of the crime, Pike was 18 and acted alongside her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, then 17, and another juvenile. While both Pike and Shipp were convicted of first-degree murder, Shipp was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

Legal representatives for Pike have contended that her youth was characterized by severe violence, neglect, and sexual abuse, including instances of rape when she was 11 and 17 years old. They also highlighted her subsequent diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, arguing these factors warrant a sentence reduction to life without parole.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee declined the clemency plea, while May Martinez, the mother of victim Colleen Slemmer, has publicly advocated for the execution to be carried out. The case has also drawn international attention, with United Nations human rights experts urging a commutation of Pike’s death sentence.

Since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the US in 1976, women have comprised only 18 of the 1,683 executions recorded. If the execution ultimately proceeds, Pike would hold the distinction of being the only individual in Tennessee’s modern death penalty era executed for a crime committed as a teenager.