A federal appeals court has stayed the execution of Christa Gail Pike, the only woman on the state’s “death row,” US media reported on Wednesday. Tennessee was scheduled to execute its first woman in more than 200 years on Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an attempt to stop her. However, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit intervened at the last minute. Christa Pike, 50, who was convicted of torturing and killing a classmate when she was 18, was going to die by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, but according to a New York Post report, she instead asked to be shot by an all-female firing squad. Human rights experts have condemned the decision to continue the execution, but say the Supreme Court can still overturn the stay of execution. Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who has represented many death row inmates in the past, told Al Jazeera: “Very few women are executed, but even fewer in Tennessee – it’s been 200 years. So this is a step back to about 1820. So why is Pike hoping to avoid lethal injection instead of the firing squad, and how does the US execute people? Here’s what you need to know: Why was Christa Pike convicted? Pike was convicted of murdering another young woman she considered a romantic rival more than 30 years ago. In January 1995, Pike, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, 17, and Shadolla Peterson, 18, lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer to a wooded area and tortured and killed her. All four were students at a Job Corps vocational center in Knoxville. It was later revealed that the attackers had carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, which Shipp later admitted to carving a piece of Slemmer’s skull. Pike and Shipp confessed and were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996. Pike was sentenced to death with the possibility of parole. Colleen Slemmer, May Martinez, sits with retired Knoxville Police Department Detective Randy York outside a Knox County courthouse. [File: J Miles Carey/USA Today Network via Imagn Images/Reuters]What do your lawyers argue? Which should not be executed at all. On Wednesday, just hours before Pike’s execution was to take place, a federal appeals court issued an order saying: “The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee determined that it did not have jurisdiction over Christa Pike’s Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(6) motion to reopen the judgment denying the writ of habeas. Therefore, plaintiff’s death sentence is ORDERED to be carried out STANDING until further order of this court.” However, the Supreme Court can still overturn this order, Stafford Smith told Al Jazeera. “The Supreme Court has been overturning suspensions recently,” he added. Pike’s legal team previously asked the governor to commute his sentence to life in prison without parole. He pointed to evidence that his mother drank heavily during pregnancy, which affected Pike’s brain development and impulse control. “The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma is no more,” her attorneys wrote. She would be the only person executed in modern-day Tennessee for a crime committed when she was a teenager. His attorney, Stephen Ferrell, said scientists now understand much more about adolescent brain development and that his sentencing was an outlier. Stafford Smith said: “Christa was just a teenager and had suffered horrendous abuse as a child. She is now 50 years old and a totally different person. It’s so useless: will this really make the world a more civilized place?” However, Governor Bill Lee has denied clemency. A group of United Nations human rights experts has called for his sentence to be commuted. Why is this case so rare? The United States almost never executes women. Women account for 18 of the 1,683 people executed since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976 — just over 1 percent. Tennessee had executed only 17 people in that time before Wednesday, with Pike being the only woman on death row. If the execution goes ahead, it will be the state’s first execution of a woman since 1820, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Why doesn’t Pike want a lethal injection? Her legal team and trauma experts say it could force her to relive the abuse she suffered as a child. Her clemency petition documents childhood violence, neglect and sexual abuse, including rapes when she was 11 and 17 years old. It also cites his diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Experts on sexual violence and trauma argue that procedures involving lethal injection are likely to trigger severe memories of that abuse. His legal team also argues that he has small veins and a blood condition that could make it difficult to place an IV, a claim the state disputes. In May, Tennessee prison officials abandoned the execution of another prisoner, Tony Carruthers, after failing to find a suitable vein. According to The New York Post, Pike’s lawyers said she also fears a painful death by lethal injection. The newspaper reported that he wants to be shot exclusively by women. squad, with members of Slemmer’s family among the witnesses. Tennessee is not among the five states that authorize the firing squad. In court in August, her lawyers proposed hanging instead, noting that it was the method Tennessee last used to execute a woman. The state objected to that, saying Tennessee has neither the equipment nor the legal authority to carry it out. The judge sided with the state, but allowed for the possibility of an all-female execution team. Tennessee also allows inmates whose crimes before January 1999 to choose the electric chair; Pike’s crime took place in 1995. What rules do different states have? There are 27 states with the death penalty, although four have suspended its use. Lethal injection is authorized in all states with the death penalty; electrocution in nine states; gasoline in nine; and the firing squad in five. In Idaho, the firing squad became the primary method in July 2026. Tennessee authorizes lethal injection and electrocution. If both are declared unconstitutional, your law allows any constitutional method. Since 2008, the Supreme Court has required prisoners challenging an execution method to identify a feasible alternative that significantly reduces the risk of severe pain. In June, a federal judge permanently banned Alabama from executing Jeffery Lee with nitrogen gas, ruling that it violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. He considered his proposed alternative, the firing squad, feasible. What are the different methods? The United States has used five: lethal injection, electrocution, gas, firing squad and hanging. Lethal injection accounts for 1,491 executions since 1976, while electrocution has been used 163 times. The gas has been used 19 times, with Alabama and Louisiana being the only states to have used it. In nitrogen executions, a mask is placed over the prisoner’s face and the air he breathes is replaced with pure nitrogen. The firing squad, the method Pike reportedly wants, has been used only six times since 1976. Hanging, once the primary method, is not currently authorized in any state. (Al Jazeera) Why are execution methods so controversial? Because none of them work reliably as expected, many experts say. The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” But the Supreme Court has made challenges to the death penalty more difficult to win. It has ruled that showing that a method carries risks of severe pain is not enough; Inmates must also identify a viable alternative that significantly reduces that risk. Lethal injection depends on finding a usable vein. If the drugs go into a muscle or the needle becomes clogged, the prisoner can suffer extreme pain. In 2017, legal challenges in Arkansas cited botched lethal injections in Oklahoma and Arizona. Meanwhile, the electric chair doesn’t always kill with the first jolt. If the prisoner’s heart is still beating, another shock should be applied. An autopsy of Mikal Mahdi, executed by firing squad in South Carolina in 2025, found that only two of three bullets hit him, and none hit his heart. A miscalculated hanging can mean death by slow strangulation. Witnesses said Kenneth Smith, the first person executed with nitrogen gas, appeared conscious and writhed for several minutes.
