Execution Paused at Last Moment for Christa Pike, Tennessee’s Only Woman on Death Row

Posted by Ryan Mitchell - October 10, 2026

A federal appeals court halted Christa Gail Pike’s execution Wednesday morning, about an hour before Tennessee was scheduled to put her to death for torturing and murdering a 19-year-old classmate in 1995.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit granted Pike, 50, a stay “until further order” shortly before she was due to receive a lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Insтιтution in Nashville, according to a court order obtained by PEOPLE.

The 2-1 majority said it needed time to consider whether Pike’s latest filing should return to federal district court as a motion to reopen her earlier habeas proceedings or be treated as a second habeas peтιтion subject to strict legal limits.

Pike’s attorneys argue that Tennessee recently reversed its previous position that she fabricated her Sєxual abuse. They contend that the state’s acknowledgment of her history of child Sєxual abuse and rape “erodes the foundation” of earlier state-court proceedings and raises questions about the integrity of the subsequent federal proceedings, the order states.

The state argues that Pike is attempting to relitigate an ineffective-ᴀssistance-of-counsel claim based on her trial attorneys’ alleged failure to investigate or present evidence of her abuse.

Tennessee quickly asked the U.S. Supreme Court ro vacate the stay and allow Pike’s execution to proceed, according to The New York Times.

The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office called the dispute a “technical issue” and vowed to “advoate for the lawfully-imposed sentence,” the Times reported. In its filing, the state argued that its “strong interest in finality and the surviving victims’ right to closure” required the stay to be rejected.

“The interests of justice and the finality of Pike’s impending execution compel the entry of a short stay of execution in order to properly analyze the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits,” Circuit Judge Jane Stranch wrote in the majority order. Judge Karen Nelson Moore concurred.

Circuit Judge Richard Griffin dissented, calling Pike’s filing “another last-ditch meritless effort to delay a lawful execution” and arguing that it should be dismissed as a successive habeas peтιтion.

Pike had been scheduled to die at 10 a.m. CDT, or 11 a.m. EDT. Execution witnesses had already gathered at the prison when the order was issued around 9 a.m. local time, according to the ᴀssociated Press.

It was not immediately clear when the Sixth Circuit would decide the underlying motion.

If executed, Pike would be the first woman put to death by Tennessee in at least 200 years. She would also be the only person executed by Tennessee in the modern death-penalty era for a crime committed at age 18, according to court documents previously obtained by PEOPLE.

The last-minute reprieve came after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Pike’s request for a stay Tuesday evening. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee had denied her clemency peтιтion Monday, saying he would uphold her death sentence “after deliberate consideration,” according to NBC News.

Before Lee announced his decision, Pike wrote in a letter shared with the outlet that she had accepted either outcome.

“Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace,” Pike wrote. “I am not afraid to die. I’m only nervous about the process.”

Pike was sentenced to death for the January 1995 murder of fellow Knoxville Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer.

Pike was 18 and Slemmer was 19 when Pike, her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and their friend Shadolla Peterson lured Slemmer to a wooded area of the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus on Jan. 12, 1995, PEOPLE previously reported.

Pike believed Slemmer was trying to “steal” Shipp, although people who knew Slemmer denied that she was interested in him, per earlier PEOPLE coverage.

Before leaving the Job Corps campus, Pike armed herself with a box cutter and small meat cleaver. Pike and Shipp attacked Slemmer while Peterson acted as a lookout. Slemmer was tortured, cut with the box cutter and beaten with a large piece of asphalt. Shipp later acknowledged that he carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, the AP reported.

Pike took a piece of Slemmer’s skull as a souvenir and later showed it to other students, according to court documents.

Pike was convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in 1996. Shipp, who was 17 when Slemmer was killed, received life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only defendant sentenced to death.

Peterson received six years of probation after pleading guilty to being an accessory after the fact, per earlier PEOPLE coverage.

Pike does not deny killing Slemmer, but her attorneys have argued that she should instead spend the remainder of her life in prison because of her age at the time of the murder, mental illness and history of severe Sєxual abuse.

Pike was Sєxually ᴀssaulted by her grandmother’s boyfriend before she entered preschool, raped by a neighbor when she was 11 and raped by a stranger at 17, according to court records obtained by USA Today. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Pike’s current lawyers say jurors who sentenced her to death did not hear the full extent of her history of abuse and neglect, according to NBC.

The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office has not disputed that Pike experienced abuse. However, the office argued that a judge had already found it speculative whether the state’s lethal-injection protocol would cause her greater psychological harm, according to NBC News.

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid,” Pike said in a statement included in her clemency peтιтion, according to the AP. “It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected.”

“I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend,” she continued. “It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”

Slemmer’s mother, May Slemmer Martinez, supports Pike’s execution. She and her husband traveled from Florida to witness it, the AP reported.

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✓ Ryan Mitchell

A federal appeals court halted Christa Gail Pike’s execution Wednesday morning, about an hour before Tennessee was scheduled to put her to death for torturing and murdering…

Execution Paused at Last Moment for Christa Pike, Tennessee’s Only Woman on Death Row

✓ Ryan Mitchell

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