A federal appeals court stopped Christa Gail Pike’s execution on September 30, 2026, roughly an hour before Tennessee officials planned to carry it out at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
A 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit granted a short, temporary stay Wednesday morning, roughly an hour before Pike’s scheduled lethal injection.The panel issued the stay to review Pike’s representatives argument that Tennessee recently changed its litigation position on her childhood sexual-abuse claims.
the court intervened to review whether Pike’s sentencing proceedings adequately considered allegations of childhood sexual abuse and rape.
Tennessee’s attorney general wrote to the U.S. Supreme Court that stopping the procedure just before it began caused anguish for the victim’s family and encouraged what it called “abusive delay tactics” from Pike’s legal team, the Associated Press reported.
The execution would have made Pike the first woman Tennessee put to death in more than 200 years, with 18 death–sentenced women having been executed in the United States since 1976.
Now 50, Pike was convicted alongside her boyfriend, who was 17 at the time, in the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps Center. Pike received the death penalty, while her boyfriend received life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Riverbend officials had set the execution for 10:00 a.m. CDT, and the Associated Press reported that witnesses were already inside when the federal order arrived around 9 a.m. CDT.
Gov. Bill Lee rejected Pike’s clemency request Monday. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to halt the execution Tuesday.
Pike’s defense has argued that sentencing proceedings did not adequately consider severe abuse, sexual victimization, mental illness and other trauma in her background, circumstances the defense contends should have factored into the jury’s decision to impose the death penalty.
The Tennessee Supreme Court set the execution date after concluding that Pike had exhausted the standard appeals process and that no legal barrier prevented the sentence from proceeding. The court also rejected Pike’s request for a certificate of commutation to the governor, concluding she had not shown circumstances warranting relief. A separate challenge to Tennessee’s lethal-injection protocol did not win a stay this month.
A jury convicted Pike in 1996 for Slemmer’s death. Pike had told another student she planned to kill Slemmer because she “just felt mean that day.” She attacked Slemmer with a box cutter and a meat cleaver, cut and beat her repeatedly and threw asphalt at her head.
Court records show that Pike returned to the Job Corps Center carrying a piece of Slemmer’s skull, which she told another student she had kept as a souvenir.
The jury imposed the death penalty after finding that the murder involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond what the killing required and that Pike committed it to avoid arrest or prosecution.
Pike was 18 at the time of the offense. Her defense has argued that trial lawyers did not investigate or present evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, organic brain damage and the effects of a traumatic childhood.
The Tennessee Department of Correction organized formal preparations for the execution. The department accepted applications from recognized Tennessee news organizations to fill the seven statutorily required witness seats and two alternate positions, selecting participants by drawing.
Ashlee Sellars, a friend Pike met in prison, told the BBC ahead of the execution that Pike had contacted her from death row as the date approached and did not want loved ones to witness the execution. Sellars told the BBC: “Christa in this moment, I think she is fighting much more for her life to matter than she is to actually live.”
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, told the BBC she continues to support the execution and wants it to proceed so her daughter can finally rest. Martinez told the BBC that Pike “should pay for it.”
Robert Bracewell of the Justice Coalition told the BBC that the group supports Martinez and helped raise money for her travel to witness the execution.
Sandra Babcock, who represents Pike, told the BBC that trial counsel knew about Pike’s history of abuse and rape but failed to present it, and argued that the death penalty disproportionately affects defendants who receive inadequate representation.
