NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Christa Gail Pike, less than two hours away from becoming the first woman in Tennessee to be executed in more than 200 years, was granted a stay of execution on Wednesday.
A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit granted Pike, 50, a stay “until further order of this court,” The Tennessean reported. The vote was 2-1 in favor of a “short stay,” according to the newspaper.
Her attorneys confirmed the stay in an emailed statement to the newspaper.
“The court has stayed this recognizing the serious concerns about Christa’s scheduled execution,” Stephen Ferrell of the Federal Defenders Services of Eastern Tennessee 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,” Judge Jane B. Stranch wrote, according to The New York Times. She was joined by Judge Karen Moore.
State asks US Supreme Court to vacate stay
Update 11:36 a.m. ET Sept. 30: The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift an appeals court stay that paused Christa Pike’s execution on Wednesday, The Tennessean reported.
“This Court should vacate the stay,” the office wrote. “The Sixth Circuit granted a stay -- that Pike did not even request -- without determining that Pike is likely to succeed on the merits and without addressing the last-minute nature of her (motion to reopen old proceedings),” the office wrote.
Original report: Pike was scheduled to die by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution near Nashville. She was to be injected via syringes with saline and pentobarbital, an extremely strong sedative that is lethal in high doses.
Tennessee’s only female death row inmate had lost what originally appeared to be her final appeal on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene, USA Today reported.
She had been convicted and sentenced to death after she and two teen accomplices tortured, slashed and fatally beat a fellow Knoxville Job Corps student, Colleen Slemmer, 19, of Orange Park, Florida, on Jan. 12, 1995, WBIR reported. Pike was 18 at the time.
Pike was on track to become the 19th woman executed in the U.S. over the past 50 years; she was the only female on Tennessee’s death row and had been there for three decades, according to USA Today.
Tennessee last executed a woman in 1819. According to data compiled by the U.S. Supreme Court, an unnamed Black female named was hanged for murder.
On a rainy night in eastern Tennessee in January 1995, Pike and her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, invited Slemmer to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus on the pretense of smoking marijuana.
According to court filings, Pike believed that Slemmer was attempting to “steal” her boyfriend.
Investigators said that Pike and Shipp attacked Slemmer for at least 30 minutes. Slemmer suffered repeated injuries, including wounds from a meat cleaver and another sharp object, WBIR reported. A pentagram was also carved into her chest, according to an autopsy and testimony presented in the case.
Pike delivered the final blow with a piece of asphalt, prosecutors said.
“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 that was attached to 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.”
A third person, Shadolla Peterson, 18, was arrested but was given probation after agreeing to testify against Pike and Shipp, according to The Tennessean.
[ Only woman on death row in Tennessee files challenge to execution protocol ]
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to death. Shipp was convicted of the same charge but avoided the death penalty because he was a minor at the time of the murder, the newspaper reported. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Shipp’s request for parole was denied in October 2025, WBIR reported. He is eligible for another hearing in October 2031, according to the television station.
Shipp remains imprisoned in the Northwest Correctional Complex in Lake County, three hours west of Nashville, The Tennessean reported.
Pike was the youngest woman sentenced to death in the modern era of U.S. executions, the Nashville Banner reported.
Pike’s attorneys cited her youth at the time of the murder and her “horrible childhood” that involved sexual abuse and neglect.
Pike was also convicted of the 2004 attempted murder of a female inmate when the prison where she was housed was evacuated during a fire.
May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, had planned to be at the execution, USA Today reported.
“I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting,” Martinez told WBIR in 2021. “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was.”
The most recent execution of a woman in the U.S. occurred in January 2023, The Tennessean reported. That is when Amber McLaughlin died by lethal injection in Missouri for the 2003 kidnapping, rape and murder of her former girlfriend, Beverly Guenther. She was convicted and sentenced to death in 2006.
McLaughlin is believed to be the first transgender woman to be executed in the United States.
“I am not afraid to die,” Pike wrote in a letter to NBC News before her plea for clemency was denied by Gov. Bill Lee on Monday. “I’m only nervous about the process.”
A documentary titled “Dead Woman Walking: Christa Pike Vs Tennessee” was posted to YouTube on Sept. 18, The Tennessean reported.
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