Christa Pike’s Tennessee Execution Halted at the Last Moment — What Happened?
Posted by Team - October 4, 2026
A death row inmate — set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee in over 200 years — was granted a stay by a federal appeals court just over an hour before her scheduled execution.
Christa Pike, now 50, was due to be executed by lethal injection at 10 a.m. CDT Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution in Nashville for a heinous murder she committed in 1995, when she was 18 years old.
The Court of Appeals ordered the stay based on Pike’s claims that Sєxual abuse and rape she says she suffered as a child were not properly considered when she was sentenced.
The order –– which came after witnesses to the execution had already gathered at the prison –– said that the “short stay of execution” was to last “until further order of this court.”
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Pike, who was sentenced to death for killing Colleen Slemmer, is shown in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Jan. 1, 1996.Tennessee Department of Correcti via AP
The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office told The Post that it had asked the US Supreme Court to “lift the stay.”
“We will continue to advocate for the lawfully-imposed sentence as the courts work through this technical issue,” a spokesman said.
