Listen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated using AI-based technology. Pronunciation errors may occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve results. The Tennessee execution of Christa Gail Pike for a murder she committed when she was 18 was halted Wednesday about an hour before it was scheduled to begin, while a federal appeals court attempted to review whether her allegations of child sexual abuse and rape were fully considered in her sentencing. This would have been the first state execution of a woman in at least 200 years. Pike, now 50, and her boyfriend were convicted of stabbing and beating Colleen Slemmer, 19, her classmate at a job training center, in Knoxville in 1995. The case attracted widespread attention at the time, in part because a pentagram carved into Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 1990. It was not immediately clear whether Tennessee’s attorney general was appealing the decision, or how long the execution could be delayed. A phone message and email was left with a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office seeking comment. Execution witnesses had already gathered at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the order was issued around 9 a.m. CDT. People gather during an anti-death penalty protest at the Tennessee State Capitol on Sunday in Nashville. (George Walker IV/The Associated Press) The case As the execution date approached, debate over the death penalty for young offenders renewed. Pike does not deny committing the murder, but her supporters have argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and a history of serious sexual abuse that included being raped since she was a small child. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds were sentenced to death. in Tennessee their sentences have been overturned. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request by Pike’s lawyers to stop the execution. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee denied Pike clemency on Monday. “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old boy. It took me many years to realize the seriousness of what I had done,” Pike said in a statement included in his clemency petition. “Even more so to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s son, sister or friend. Now it makes me sick to think that I had the ability to commit such a crime.” In this image from video provided by WBIR-TV, Pike cries after being sentenced to death on March 30, 1996. (WBIR-TV/The Associated Press) Slemmer’s mother wants lethal injection to be carried out, saying she has waited decades for Pike’s sentence to be carried out. “Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez said in a phone interview. Martinez said a group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the death penalty. execution. The 1995 murder shook the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike slashed Slemmer with a box cutter and hit her with a large piece of asphalt. Tadaryl Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into her body. Shipp was 17 years old when the crime occurred and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death. Executions of women are rare in the United States. Tennessee has not executed a woman in at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. However, older records can be spotty, making it difficult to know precise details about the last woman to be executed there. It’s a rarity in the U.S. Since 1976, 18 women have been executed in the country, representing about one percent of all executions, according to the center. Most recently, Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin in 2023 for a 2003 murder, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the United States. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that the US government executed a female inmate.
