Christa Pike execution delayed: Here's why

Tennessee’s planned execution of Christa Gail Pike has been halted an hour before she was scheduled to die by lethal injection because a federal appeals court (the 6th Circuit) issued a last-minute stay to review new arguments from her legal team, specifically whether her history of severe childhood sexual abuse, rape, and mental illness was fully considered at her sentencing.

The court wanted proper time to thoroughly analyse the fully briefed document before allowing the execution to proceed. If it occurred, this would have been the state’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years.

The U.S. Supreme Court had earlier declined to intervene, and Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, refused to grant a clemency request. Tennessee’s attorney general immediately appealed the stay to the Supreme Court, calling the ruling a “technical issue.”

Pike was 18 years old when she and her 17-year-old boyfriend killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a Knoxville job training facility in 1995. Prosecutors said Pike lured Slemmer into a wooded area, cut her with a box cutter, and beat her with asphalt.

A pentagram was also carved into the victim’s body, sparking “satanic panic” fears at the time. Pike’s boyfriend received life in prison; Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Pike didn’t refuse the murder, but her lawyers argue her age, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and history of abuse from being raped from toddlerhood warrant reconsideration.

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has waited decades for the sentence to be carried out and planned to witness the execution.