Federal appeals court halts execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A federal appeals court halted the execution in Tennessee of Christa Pike about an hour before it was set to begin Wednesday.

The judges said they want to review whether her allegations of sexual abuse and rape as a child were fully considered before she was sentenced to death.

This would have been the state’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years. Now 50, she was convicted of a 1995 murder she committed at age 18.

Tennessee is preparing to put to death Christa Gail Pike for a 1995 murder she committed at age 18 in what would be the state's first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.

Pike, now 50, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday morning by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of stabbing and beating 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.

The case garnered widespread attention at the time in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer's body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. As the execution date drew near, it renewed debate over the death penalty for young offenders.

Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue the state should consider Pike’s age at the time, mental illness and a history of severe sexual abuse that included being raped from the time she was a toddler. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds sentenced to death in Tennessee have had their sentences vacated.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request from Pike's attorneys to halt the execution. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Monday denied Pike clemency.

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition. “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 wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez said in a telephone interview.

Martinez said a group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the execution.

The 1995 killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into her body.

Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Older records can be spotty, though, so it’s difficult to know precise details about the last woman who was put to death there.

It's a rarity across the U.S. Since 1976, 18 women have been put to death in the country, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the center.

Most recently, Missouri in 2023 executed Amber McLaughlin for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government put a female inmate to death.