Christa Pike was less than two hours away from execution Wednesday morning when a federal appeals court stepped in and stopped Tennessee from carrying out her death sentence.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit halted Pike’s scheduled September 30 execution while judges consider a new legal challenge involving her history of severe childhood sexual abuse and earlier federal court proceedings.
The ruling temporarily blocks an execution that would have made Pike the first woman put to death by Tennessee in more than 200 years. Pike, now 50, has spent three decades on death row for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
In its order, the appeals court said, “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 merit.”
The Sixth Circuit also wrote, “To adequately address and resolve the issues now presented to this court and in carefully balancing the equities, we find that a stay of Pike’s execution is necessary.”
The decision came from a divided three-judge panel. According to the court details reported by USA TODAY, Judges Jane Branstetter Stranch and Karen Nelson Moore supported the stay, while Judge Richard Allen Griffin dissented.
Tennessee quickly moved to challenge the decision. According to USA TODAY, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office filed an application with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to lift the Sixth Circuit stay.
“The Sixth Circuit granted a stay − that Pike did not even request − without determining that Pike is likely to succeed on the merits,” the state argued.
Tennessee also accused Pike’s attorneys of raising claims too late in the process after decades of litigation.
“As Colleen’s mother recently said, ‘Thirty-one years is long enough,'” the state wrote. “The Court should vacate the stay of execution to avoid rewarding Pike’s abusive delay tactics, to prevent further trauma to Colleen’s family, and to protect Tennessee’s grave sovereign interest in the execution of its exhaustively reviewed judgment.”
The latest legal fight centers on whether Pike should be allowed to reopen her federal habeas proceedings. According to USA TODAY, her attorneys argue that Tennessee recently changed its position regarding the sexual abuse Pike suffered as a child, undermining what they say was an important premise in earlier court proceedings.
The Sixth Circuit summarized that argument this way: “She states that the State recently reversed its litigation position that she is a liar who fabricated sexual abuse.”
“Pike contends that the State’s concession of her history of child sexual abuse and rape ‘erodes the foundation’ of her state court proceedings. Pike ties this erosion to defects in the federal court proceedings.”
Pike’s childhood trauma has become central to the final stage of her case.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Pike’s clemency petition described repeated sexual abuse beginning when she was a very young child, along with later assaults, neglect, and untreated trauma. The organization reported that Tennessee did not dispute the central factual claims concerning her childhood abuse during recent litigation.
A group of women’s advocacy organizations argued that Tennessee’s execution process could trigger traumatic flashbacks severe enough to raise constitutional concerns.
“She will relive the sounds, the smells, and the pain,” the organizations wrote in a friend of the court brief quoted by USA TODAY.
“She will feel it now as she did then. And it will be as horrific for her now as it was then,” they continued. “(We) have very little doubt that Christa Pike will go to her death believing and feeling that she is being raped yet again.”
Tennessee prosecutors have acknowledged Pike’s history while arguing that it does not invalidate the sentence imposed for Slemmer’s killing.
“Pike’s prior abuse and mental struggles are tragic to say the least,” the Attorney General’s Office wrote. “But they are no cause to insulate her from a lawfully imposed and exhaustively reviewed death sentence that a jury of her peers imposed purely because of her own horrific conduct.”
The crime dates back to January 12, 1995. According to the Associated Press, Pike was 18 when she and two other teenagers took Slemmer to an isolated area in Knoxville, where Slemmer was tortured and killed. Pike later received a death sentence. Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was 17 and received a life sentence because he was not eligible for capital punishment.
Tennessee described the attack in court records quoted by USA TODAY.
“Armed with a box cutter and meat cleaver, Pike and two accomplices lured Slemmer to an isolated area. There, Pike kneed Slemmer’s head, threw her to the ground, and repeatedly kicked her,” the state wrote. “When Slemmer tried to flee, Pike sliced her stomach with the box cutter. … As Slemmer begged for her life, Pike repeatedly kicked her in the face. Pike then cut Slemmer’s throat as she begged for mercy.”
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has publicly supported the execution and spoken repeatedly about the toll of losing her daughter.
“I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting,” Martinez told WBIR in 2021, according to USA TODAY. “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was.”
More recently, Martinez said she intended to witness the execution.
“I’ll hold Colleen’s picture up to remind her of what she did,” she said. “She never apologized; never even tried, or her family.”
She has also expressed frustration that public attention surrounding Pike has often eclipsed her daughter.
“It’s never about the victims,” Martinez said. “It’s like Colleen was never there.”
Pike, however, expressed remorse in her clemency petition.
“Think back to the worst mistake you made as a reckless teenager. Well, mine happened to be huge, unforgettable, and ruined countless lives,” she wrote. “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. … 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.”
Her attorneys also described changes they say Pike has made during decades in prison.
“After years of psychotherapy and medications to treat her mental illness,” they wrote, “Christa is thoughtful, even-tempered, bright, funny, and hopeful.”
The intervention by the Sixth Circuit came after Pike had already lost another major effort to stop her execution. On September 29, the U.S. Supreme Court denied both her application for a stay and her petition for certiorari in a separate challenge. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee had also declined clemency one day earlier, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Before Wednesday’s federal court ruling, the [Tennessee Department of Correction] had prepared to carry out Pike’s execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
The Sixth Circuit’s intervention means that schedule is now on hold while the courts continue considering Pike’s latest claims and Tennessee continues its effort to reinstate the execution.
