Federal Court Halts Christa Pike Execution With an Hour to Spare
A federal appeals court halted the execution of Christa Pike on Wednesday, roughly one hour before Tennessee was set to put her to death. Pike, 50, would have been the first woman executed by the state in more than 200 years.
The order came around 9 a.m. Central time, as witnesses were already gathering at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the scheduled 10 a.m. lethal injection.
Why the Court Stepped In
Judge Jane Stranch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued the stay, ruling that Pike's request for federal habeas relief "requires attention," according to WSMV.
The court said it wants to review whether Pike's allegations of sexual abuse and rape as a child were fully considered before she was sentenced to death.
"Therefore, it is ORDERED that execution of the sentence of death upon the movant is STAYED until further order of this court," Stranch wrote.
The stay came just a day after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a separate request from Pike to stop the execution, and two days after Gov. Bill Lee declined to grant clemency.
Tennessee Asks the Supreme Court to Step In
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti quickly moved to challenge the ruling.
"We will continue to advocate for the lawfully imposed sentence as the courts work through this technical issue," Skrmetti said. "We are asking the Supreme Court of the United States to lift the stay."
A stay does not overturn Pike's conviction or erase her death sentence, according to WIVK. She remains on death row while the court reviews her case.
If the Supreme Court does not lift the stay and Pike ultimately loses her appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court would need to set a new execution date. That process can take months or longer.
The 1995 Murder
Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp, killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer on January 12, 1995. All three were students in the Job Corps program in Knoxville, and the case became known as the Job Corps murder.
Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend. Pike, Shipp and a friend, Shadolla Peterson, lured Slemmer to an abandoned steam plant on the University of Tennessee campus, where she was tortured and killed.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy and sentenced to death in 1996. Shipp, who was too young to face the death penalty, received a life sentence. Peterson testified for prosecutors and received probation after pleading guilty to being an accessory after the fact.
A History of Abuse at the Center of the Case
Pike's attorneys have argued she should be spared because of her age at the time of the crime and a history of severe childhood abuse. Her clemency petition described repeated sexual abuse beginning when she was a toddler, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, and United Nations experts have also raised concerns that evidence of her abuse and mental illness was never presented at trial.
Victim's Family Waits Again
Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, traveled from Florida to witness the execution.
"She did the crime. I think she should pay for it," Martinez said earlier, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Martinez has waited more than three decades for the sentence to be carried out. Long waits are common in death penalty cases. In July, Florida executed its oldest death row inmate nearly 40 years after being convicted.
Pike's Letter Before the Stay
In a letter written before the court's ruling, Pike thanked her supporters and said she had "felt more love in the last two weeks" than in her entire life.
"Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace," she wrote. "I am not afraid to die. I am only nervous about the process."
Tennessee had allowed Pike to choose between lethal injection and the electric chair. Other states have turned to different methods, including South Carolina, which has carried out firing squad executions in recent years, and Idaho, which named the firing squad its preferred execution method in 2025.
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