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The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a short stay of execution for Christa Pike on the morning of September 30 according to the court’s order and a statement from her attorneys. A divided three-judge panel concluded that additional time was needed to review arguments that her original trial did not adequately account for her history of severe childhood trauma. Stephen Ferrell of the Federal Defenders Services of Eastern Tennessee said in an emailed statement that the court had stayed the procedure after recognizing serious concerns about the scheduled execution.
Pike was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the January 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer whom she and two accomplices lured into woods near a Knoxville job training facility a Tennessee Department of Correction account shows. The group beat Slemmer with a rock stabbed her repeatedly and carved a pentagram into her chest before cutting her throat according to evidence presented at trial and detailed in a Reuters report. Pike was 18 at the time of the crime the minimum age for a death sentence while her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp received life with parole eligibility and a third participant cooperated with prosecutors.
Attorneys for Pike had argued in a 226-page clemency petition and subsequent appeals that her trial lawyers failed to introduce evidence of repeated childhood sexual abuse neglect and violence that contributed to diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder according to a New York Times review of the filings. Pike stated in materials submitted with the petition “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done.” The defense also noted that an execution would make her the first person put to death in Tennessee for an offense committed at age 18 since capital punishment resumed in the state.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee a Republican denied clemency on September 28 stating after deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency and after a thorough review of the case I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene. The Tennessee Supreme Court had rejected her appeals the previous week and the US Supreme Court declined to grant a stay on September 29 The Tennessean reported. Despite those rulings the Sixth Circuit intervened with its last-minute order at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
United Nations human rights experts had called for an immediate halt to the execution in a statement issued on September 7 by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights warning that the combination of Pike’s trauma history decades in solitary confinement and planned transfer to a men’s facility for the procedure risked violating prohibitions on torture. The experts highlighted that Pike would suffer retraumatization from being restrained by male officers given her past experiences of sexual violence. Death Penalty Information Center data shows only 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976 compared with more than 1,600 men.
If carried out the execution would have been Tennessee’s first of a woman in more than 200 years and the first in the modern era for a crime committed at age 18 according to statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center. Tennessee Department of Correction records indicate the state has carried out 17 executions since 1976 all of men with the most recent occurring on August 13 2026. Pike remains the sole woman on the state’s death row a position she has occupied since shortly after her conviction when she was the youngest person sentenced to death in Tennessee.
The victim’s mother had previously told reporters she hoped the execution would proceed so her daughter could finally rest in peace as cited in coverage by BBC News prior to the stay. Advocacy organizations including Amnesty International had joined calls for clemency citing Pike’s youth at the time of the offense and the mitigating circumstances of her upbringing a Death Penalty Information Center summary noted. The Sixth Circuit’s order leaves the timeline for any further proceedings unclear as the court reviews the merits of the pending claims.
