A US district court has temporarily halted the planned lethal-injection execution of Christa Pike, Tennessee’s only woman on death row, hours before she was due to die on Wednesday.
The state may still ask the US Supreme Court to overturn the last-minute order, meaning the execution could go ahead later in the day, according to one of Pike’s lawyers. If carried out, it would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.
Pike, 50, has been imprisoned since 1995 for the murder of her former classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in Knoxville. She was 18 when Slemmer, 19, was killed at the Job Corps Centre where they were both students.
Court records say Pike attacked Slemmer after comments about Pike’s relationship. Her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and another friend, Shadolla Peterson, were also involved, the records state.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee rejected Pike’s clemency petition on Monday, clearing the way for the execution. The US Supreme Court rejected a separate appeal on Tuesday, her lawyers said.
In a letter written before the governor’s decision, Pike said: “I am not afraid to die. I’m only nervous about the process.” She said she was “at peace” with whatever happened and thanked those who had urged the governor to intervene.
The case against Christa Pike
Prosecutors and judges have described Slemmer’s killing as exceptionally brutal. Trial records say she was beaten and cut with a meat cleaver and a box cutter over a period of between 30 minutes and an hour in woodland on the University of Tennessee campus.
When Slemmer’s body was found, part of her skull was missing and pentagrams had been carved into her forehead and chest. Fellow students later said Pike had boasted about the killing and claimed to have kept the missing piece as a souvenir.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence and was refused parole last year. Peterson testified against Pike and received probation.
Pike’s lawyers argue that her childhood sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect, together with conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and congenital brain damage, were not properly presented at her original trial.
They also say her age and mental state would be viewed differently today. Pike was 20 when she was sentenced to death in 1996, having committed the crime at 18.
In a 2018 opinion, US Circuit Judge Jane Stranch questioned whether Pike’s crime might have resulted from “the immature mind of youth rather than fixed depravity”, while still joining a ruling against her appeal.
Isolation on Tennessee’s death row
Advocates, including United Nations experts, have called for Pike’s sentence to be commuted. They have pointed to her childhood abuse and untreated mental illness, as well as the decades she spent largely isolated as the only woman on Tennessee’s death row.
Her lawyers previously argued that her imprisonment amounted to solitary confinement because she had no contact with other women on death row for most of her incarceration. A 2024 settlement with the state gave her greater opportunities to interact with other prisoners.
Pike was returned to solitary confinement before the planned execution under Tennessee’s lethal-injection rules, which require prisoners to be isolated for 14 days beforehand.
Her legal team said she had changed substantially during her time in prison. “The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists,” her lawyers said, describing her as a remorseful 50-year-old who receives treatment and supports other incarcerated women.
In a statement included with her clemency petition, Pike acknowledged the consequences of Slemmer’s death, saying: “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.”
