Christa Pike execution halted at last minute as court reviews childhood trauma evidence
Christa Pike’s execution was dramatically halted just one hour before she was due to be put to death amid serious concerns over whether key evidence about her traumatic past had been properly considered.
Pike, 50, had been set to receive a lethal injection on Wednesday morning in a historic execution that would have made her the first woman put to death in Tennessee in at least 200 years.
But at around 9 am Central, as witnesses were already gathered at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a federal appeals court stepped in and stopped it.
Pike had been scheduled to die at 10 am Central for the brutal 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued the stay while judges review whether evidence about Pike’s horrific childhood abuse was fully considered before she was sentenced to death.
It was not immediately clear how long the delay would last or when, if ever, a new execution date could be set.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office could challenge the ruling, though it was not immediately clear whether he would.
The extraordinary intervention came after Pike had appeared to exhaust her final attempts to escape execution.
The US Supreme Court rejected a bid to halt her death on Tuesday, while Tennessee Governor Bill Lee had already denied her request for clemency.
Pike was just 18 when she killed Slemmer, a fellow student at a job-training program in Knoxville, on January 12, 1995.
Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and lured the teen into a secluded wooded area.
Slemmer was beaten and cut during the attack before she was killed.
Shipp later admitted carving a pentagram into Slemmer’s body, a detail that helped propel the horrific case into the national spotlight.
Pike was convicted of murder and conspiracy and sentenced to death in 1996.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time of killing, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Pike’s lawyers have argued that her age, serious mental illness and history of extreme childhood trauma should have carried greater weight when jurors decided her punishment.
Her attorneys have said she endured sexual abuse from an extremely young age and argued that her death sentence stands apart from other Tennessee cases involving offenders who were 18 when they committed their crimes.
Pike has never denied killing Slemmer.
In a statement included in her clemency petition, she said, “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I have done.”
She added, “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.”
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, had strongly opposed clemency and traveled to Tennessee hoping to witness the execution.
She previously told AP, “Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run.”
Pike’s execution would have been an exceptionally rare event.
Only 18 women have been executed across the US since 1976, making up roughly one percent of all executions during that period, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Technology & Business Editor
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