Up to date Sept. 30, 2026, 2:35 p.m. ET
A federal appeals court docket has stayed the execution of Christa Pike lower than two hours earlier than it was set to be carried out, however the state is preventing to permit it to proceed.
The sixth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals issued an order the morning of Sept. 30 staying Pike’s execution “till additional order of this court docket,” citing new arguments regarding Pike’s traumatic childhood, which was marked by years of sexual assaults beginning earlier than she was in pre-school.
“The pursuits of justice and the finality of Pike’s impending execution compel the entry of a brief keep of execution with a view to correctly analyze the events’ absolutely briefed arguments and resolve the problems on the benefit,” the court docket wrote within the order obtained by USA TODAY.
Pike’s execution had been set for 10 a.m. CT on Wednesday, Sept. 30.
The Tennessee Legal professional Common’s Workplace rapidly filed an software within the U.S. Supreme Court docket to vacate the decrease court docket’s keep and permit the execution to proceed.
“As Colleen’s mom not too long ago mentioned, ‘Thirty-one years is lengthy sufficient,'” the state wrote. “The Court docket ought to vacate the keep of execution to keep away from rewarding Pike’s abusive delay ways, to forestall additional trauma to Colleen’s household, and to guard Tennessee’s grave sovereign curiosity within the execution of its exhaustively reviewed judgment.”
Of their response within the Supreme Court docket, Pike’s attorneys urged the justices to permit the sixth Circuit to think about the deserves of the case.
“It’s inconceivable that within the twenty first century, the legal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and baby sexual abuse whose jury by no means had the chance to think about these info in weighing the defendant’s ethical culpability,” they wrote. “That the courts would permit her execution to proceed with out giving full weight to those info is unfathomable.”
They added: “Ms. Pike’s execution would stain the justice system and undermine the general public’s confidence in its integrity.”
If Pike’s execution does proceed, she would develop into the primary girl put to dying in Tennessee in additional than 200 years and solely the third girl to be executed within the U.S. up to now decade. Pike, 50, was convicted of the extended and brutal 1995 homicide of her romantic rival, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
This is what else it’s worthwhile to know.
Extra about Christa Pike’s traumatic previous
Pike’s attorneys, girls’s advocacy teams, intercourse assault consultants and Amnesty Worldwide have been vigorously preventing for her life in current months. They introduced a novel argument within the annals of dying row: that Pike was so traumatized from years of sexual assault as a lady that her execution would trigger her to relive these moments and expertise an unconstitutional degree of merciless and weird punishment.
“She is going to relive the sounds, the smells, and the ache,” wrote a dozen girls’s advocacy organizations in what’s often called a friend-of-the court docket temporary filed within the Tennessee Supreme Court docket on Sept. 10.
“She is going to really feel it now as she did then. And will probably be as horrific for her now because it was then,” they wrote. “(We) have little or no doubt that Christa Pike will go to her dying believing and feeling that she is being raped but once more.”
Court docket data present that Pike grew to become a rape sufferer earlier than she was even in preschool. Her grandmother’s boyfriend focused her for years, sexually assaulting her till she was in kindergarten, based on court docket paperwork obtained by USA TODAY.
On the age of 11, a neighbor raped Pike in an assault that prompted an an infection and preceded a suicide try on the age of 12. And at 17, a stranger attacked Pike whereas she was out strolling, pressured her into the woods, and raped her, court docket data say.
Prosecutors have not too long ago acknowledged Pike’s harrowing childhood however they preserve that her punishment suits the brutal crime.
“Pike’s prior abuse and psychological struggles are tragic to say the least,” the Legal professional Common’s Workplace wrote in arguments to the Supreme Court docket earlier this week. “However they’re no trigger to insulate her from a lawfully imposed and exhaustively reviewed dying sentence {that a} jury of her friends imposed purely due to her personal horrific conduct.”
At each flip, courts and Tennessee Gov. Invoice Lee rejected Pike’s arguments, culminating in the Supreme Court docket declining to take up the case lower than 24 hours earlier than the execution. That’s till Wednesday, when the sixth Circuit intervened following late-night filings by Pike’s attorneys.
Extra about ruling that stayed Christa Pike’s execution
The sixth Circuit’s keep, issued in a 2-1 choice, pauses Pike’s execution till the court docket points one other order.
“To adequately deal with and resolve the problems now introduced to this court docket and in fastidiously balancing the equities, we discover {that a} keep of Pike’s execution is important,” wrote Decide Jane Branstetter Stranch, an Obama appointee. Concurring was Decide Karen Nelson Moore, a Clinton appointee.
In his dissenting opinion, George W. Bush appointee Decide Richard Allen Griffin wrote that Pike’s new filings amounted to a “last-ditch meritless effort to delay a lawful execution.”
The difficulty earlier than the court docket is whether or not to permit Pike to reopen a continuing known as a habeas petition.
Pike’s habeas proceedings ended years in the past. The idea of her attorneys’ argument to let her reopen these proceedings is the state’s current admission that Pike was sexually abused as a baby, based on court docket filings.
“She states that the State not too long ago reversed its litigation place that she is a liar who fabricated sexual abuse,” the sixth Circuit panel wrote. “Pike contends that the State’s concession of her historical past of kid sexual abuse and rape ‘erodes the inspiration’ of her state court docket proceedings. Pike ties this erosion to defects within the federal court docket proceedings.”
Pike’s legal professionals raised the problem with a federal choose in Jap Tennessee, however that choose didn’t let her reopen the habeas proceedings.
What did Christa Pike do?
On Jan. 12, 1995, 18-year-old Pike, her boyfriend, and one other younger girl lured Slemmer to the woods in Knoxville. Pike and her boyfriend, then-17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp, tortured and murdered Slemmer in a criminal offense that made worldwide headlines each for its brutality and due to Pike’s gender and youth.
“Armed with a field cutter and meat cleaver, Pike and two accomplices lured Slemmer to an remoted space. There, Pike kneed Slemmer’s head, threw her to the bottom, and repeatedly kicked her,” the Tennessee Legal professional Common’s Workplace wrote in court docket paperwork. “When Slemmer tried to flee, Pike sliced her abdomen with the field cutter. … As Slemmer begged for her life, Pike repeatedly kicked her within the face. Pike then minimize Slemmer’s throat as she begged for mercy.”
After Slemmer made one last try to flee, Pike smashed the again of her head with a rock, they wrote. Shipp additionally carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, and Pike later confirmed off a bit of Slemmer’s cranium to a good friend.
Pike was sentenced to dying and Shipp obtained a life sentence as a result of at 17, he wasn’t eligible for the dying penalty.
For Slemmer’s mom, Could Martinez, Pike’s execution greater than 30 years after her daughter’s homicide would symbolize long-awaited justice.
“I simply need Christa down so I can finish it, relieve my daughter, so she lastly may be resting,” Martinez instructed WBIR-TV in 2021. “There’s not a day goes by that I do not take into consideration Colleen or how she died and the way tough it was.”
Martinez not too long ago instructed WBIR-TV that she was planning to witness Pike’s execution.
“I am going to maintain Colleen’s image as much as remind her of what she did,” Martinez instructed the station. “She by no means apologized − by no means even tried − or her household.”
She mentioned she remembers her daughter as a playful and compassionate younger girl who beloved curler skating, computer systems, and taking part in outdated video games together with her household. She laments that Pike so overshadowed her daughter over time.
“It is by no means concerning the victims,” she mentioned. “It is like Colleen was by no means there.”
Christa Pike’s life on dying row
Like the opposite 44 girls on dying row within the U.S., Pike has skilled circumstances that advocates say is extra unfair and undignified in comparison with their male counterparts, a USA TODAY investigation present in June.
Ladies going by the legal justice system face slut-shaming at trial, having to battle for entry to menstrual merchandise in jail, enduring the stares of some male guards, and what quantities to solitary confinement with fewer privileges and socialization than male inmates.
For 27 years, Pike was successfully in solitary confinement as the one girl on Tennessee’s dying row earlier than she received the flexibility to work together with different inmates throughout meals, courses, and non secular companies.
“Feminine prisoners obtain the worst of each worlds,” based on Stephanie Covington, a Southern California-based clinician specializing in trauma-informed responses to violence, and Barbara Bloom, a professor emeritus in legal justice professor at Sonoma State College in California.
Lately underneath extra typical circumstances, Pike’s attorneys mentioned in a clemency petition that she discovered an outlet each in portray and in “serving to new girls to the jail.”
“After years of psychotherapy and medicines to deal with her psychological sickness,” they wrote, “Christa is considerate, even-tempered, brilliant, humorous, and hopeful.”
Pike expressed regret for Slemmer’s homicide in her clemency petition.
“Suppose again to the worst mistake you made as a reckless teenager. Properly, mine occurred to be large, unforgettable and ruined numerous lives,” she wrote. “I used to be a mentally unwell 18-year-old child. … I took the life of somebody’s baby, sister, good friend. It sickens me now to suppose I had the flexibility to commit such a criminal offense.”
When was the final execution of a lady within the U.S.?
Solely two girls have been executed up to now decade, based on the nonprofit Demise Penalty Info Heart.
In 2023, 49-year-old Amber McLaughlin grew to become the primary brazenly transgender individual executed within the U.S. Missouri executed her by deadly injection for the 2003 rape and stabbing dying of her ex-girlfriend, 45-year-old Beverly Guenther.
In 2021, 52-year-old Lisa Montgomery grew to become the primary girl executed by the federal authorities in 67 years. The federal authorities executed Montgomery by deadly injection in Indiana for the 2004 homicide in Missouri of 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Montgomery strangled Stinnett, carried out a crude cesarean part on her and fled with Stinnett’s child, who survived the assault.
What number of girls has Tennessee executed?
The final girl to be executed in Tennessee is believed to be an unnamed Black girl who was hanged in 1819, based on historic data obtained by The Tennessean, a part of the USA TODAY Community.
Earlier than that, there was a dangling in 1808 of one other Black girls, whose identify was additionally not recorded as a result of she was enslaved and considered as property, leading to her removing from historic execution registries.
The earliest recorded execution of a lady in Tennessee was in 1807, when a Black girl named Mary Holcomb died by hanging on March 20. Although Holcomb was convicted of homicide, many individuals of coloration have been unjustly killed over false accusations or for no cause in any respect.
In 2010, a feminine dying row inmate named Gaile Owens got here inside three months of being executed for hiring a hitman to kill her abusive husband Ron in 1985. However then-Gov. Phil Bredesen commuted Owens’ sentence to life in jail due to the abuse she suffered from her husband.
Contributing: Peter Burditt, Nashville Tennessean
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime and courts reporter who covers the dying penalty, chilly instances and breaking information for USA TODAY. Comply with her on X at @amandaleeusat
