The Christa Pike execution is back on after the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted a last minute pause that a federal appeals court had placed on it, clearing Tennessee to put to death the only woman on its death row.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 10 a.m. local time at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. At 8:17 a.m., less than two hours before that time, a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit issued what it called a “short stay of execution,” a temporary pause that stops the state from going forward. The panel said it needed time to properly analyze both sides’ arguments and decide the issues on their merits. Judges Karen Moore and Jane Stranch voted for the pause, and Judge Richard Griffin disagreed.
Tennessee went straight to the Supreme Court and asked the justices to throw out the pause. In its filing, the state accused Pike of “abusive, tactical delay” and pointed out that she had not even asked the 6th Circuit for a stay. The Supreme Court granted Tennessee’s request later Wednesday. The order did not overturn Pike’s conviction or her death sentence, and as of publication, it had not been confirmed whether the Christa Pike execution has been carried out or when it will be rescheduled.
The ruling came one day after the Supreme Court turned down a separate request from Pike to stop her execution. That challenge targeted Tennessee’s lethal injection method and the way the state handles lawsuits over it. The justices denied it Tuesday without explanation and with no noted dissents. On Monday, Governor Bill Lee refused to grant clemency, the power a governor has to reduce a sentence or spare someone’s life, saying he did “not plan to intervene.
Pike was 18 when she killed 19 year old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville in 1995. Both were students at the Knoxville Job Corps, a federal training program for low income young people. Pike believed Slemmer was flirting with her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp. Pike, Shipp and another friend lured Slemmer into the woods, where court records show Pike cut her throat, struck her with a meat cleaver, carved a pentagram into her chest and crushed her skull with a piece of asphalt. A jury convicted Pike of first degree murder in 1996 and sentenced her to death.
Her attorneys have spent years arguing that she should not be executed because of her age at the time of the crime, the physical and sexual abuse she suffered as a child, and later diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. Pike spent close to three decades in what her lawyers called de facto solitary confinement before a 2024 settlement allowed her to work and share meals with a small group of other women.
If the Christa Pike execution goes forward, she will be the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820 and only the fourth in the state’s history.
