{"id":226133,"date":"2026-10-01T00:58:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T00:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/tennessee-execution-of-lone-woman-on-death-row-halted-by-federal-appeals-court-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T00:58:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T00:58:21","slug":"tennessee-execution-of-lone-woman-on-death-row-halted-by-federal-appeals-court-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/tennessee-execution-of-lone-woman-on-death-row-halted-by-federal-appeals-court-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee execution of lone woman on death row halted by federal appeals court – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Tennessee can carry out its planned execution of the lone woman on death row<\/a> after the Supreme Court vacated a lower court\u2019s Wednesday morning order that had temporarily blocked the move.
The high court\u2019s decision hours later caps a flurry of last-minute legal maneuvering in a bid by convicted murderer Christa Pike\u2019s legal team to spare her life. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
About an hour before her scheduled execution at 10 a.m. local time in Nashville, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District said it needed to review claims made by her lawyers. At issue was whether Pike can reopen a court proceeding centered around her allegations that she was sexually abused beginning when she was a child \u2014 abuse that the state did not dispute at a special hearing in August.
The appeals court in a split decision agreed to a \u201cshort\u201d reprieve halting her execution \u201cin order to properly analyze the parties\u2019 fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits.\u201d
In turn, the state attorney general\u2019s office asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that the execution must go on to \u201cavoid rewarding Pike\u2019s abusive delay tactics.\u201d
In their dissent, the three liberal justices wrote that vacating the lower court\u2019s temporary stay of execution \u201cinterferes with the Sixth Circuit\u2019s routine administrative handling of a capital case and unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike\u2019s claim.\u201d
\u201cI see no reason to shortcircuit the ordinary process of appellate review, particularly in light of the grave consequences of an erroneous decision,\u201d Sotomayor wrote.
Both Gov. Bill Lee and the Supreme Court had said this week they would not stop Pike\u2019s execution.
Before learning Monday that Lee would not be intervening in her case, Pike, 50, wrote in a letter to NBC News, shared by her spiritual adviser: \u201cWhether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace.\u201d
\u201cI am not afraid to die,\u201d wrote Pike, who has been on death row for more than three decades. \u201cI\u2019m only nervous about the process.\u201d
If executed, Pike would be the first woman in more than 200 years that the state puts to death, according to historical records<\/a>.
In 1995, Pike was 18 when Knoxville police say she and two teenage accomplices worked together to torture, slash and fatally beat Colleen Slemmer, 19. Police say Pike and the others lured Slemmer, a classmate in their Job Corps training program, to an abandoned steam plant at the nearby University of Tennessee and attacked her.
The case became sensationalized when investigators said it was tied to the occult<\/a> because someone had carved a pentagram into Slemmer\u2019s chest and Pike bragged to another student that she had kept a fragment of the victim\u2019s skull as a \u201csouvenir.\u201d
Pike doesn\u2019t dispute her role in the grisly killing. But details about her upbringing, marked by years of sexual and physical abuse and neglect, were not shared with the jury that sentenced her to death. Her lawyers believe that if such evidence of abuse were presented at a trial now, a death sentence would not be guaranteed.
They had asked the Supreme Court to halt Pike\u2019s execution, saying that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from being molested and raped beginning when she was a toddler. Being held down and strapped to a gurney, they wrote, will likely create \u201csevere mental suffering and superadded psychological terror under Tennessee\u2019s lethal injection protocol.\u201d
The state hasn\u2019t denied that Pike has suffered from abuse. But in a response filed Monday, the attorney general\u2019s office said a judge already concluded last month that it was \u201cspeculative whether Pike would suffer\u201d greater mental harm from how the lethal injection protocol is carried out.
The Supreme Court appeared to be Pike\u2019s remaining chance for a reprieve after Lee said he was upholding her death sentence \u201cafter deliberate consideration.\u201d The high court denied her petition Tuesday evening.
Pike\u2019s lawyers said Monday they were \u201csaddened and heartbroken\u201d that the governor would not be granting clemency.
Another woman, Gaile Owens<\/a>, was on Tennessee\u2019s death row with Pike until 2010, when Gov. Phil Bredesen changed her sentence to life in prison.
In her letter, Pike wrote that people have seen a \u201climited public persona that has been the only narrative\u201d about her. Her lawyers had tried to convince Lee that she was a product of a tumultuous childhood.
\u201cStepping into the chaos of Christa\u2019s life that led her to that moment will not justify her actions that night,\u201d one of her lawyers, Randall Spivey, said of when she committed her crime. \u201cBut the chaos will show you that Christa was broken, not evil.\u201d
Pike\u2019s lawyers also point to her age and how it led to such a different outcome in her case.
While she faced a death sentence because of her first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder conviction in Slemmer\u2019s death, another conspirator was spared: Pike\u2019s boyfriend, who was 17 at the time. Tadaryl Shipp received a life sentence because he was a juvenile and remains eligible for parole. Shipp testified at his post-conviction hearing that he was the one who carved a pentagram into Slemmer\u2019s chest.
The third accomplice \u2014 Shadolla Peterson, then 18 \u2014 served as a lookout in the crime and received probation in exchange for her cooperation.
Pike told police she \u201cwasn\u2019t even thinking\u201d when she assaulted Slemmer and that she had been jealous believing the victim was trying to steal Shipp\u2019s attention. Pike\u2019s lawyers say that her age would have been more of a factor today, given how scientific research has evolved in understanding that young people\u2019s brains are still developing<\/a> well beyond their teen years.
In addition, her lawyers say that her legal representatives at the time could have accepted a deal from prosecutors who were offering a life sentence without parole in return for a guilty plea.
Pike sobbed as the judge told her she would die by electrocution, then the only form of execution in Tennessee before the state moved to lethal injection as its primary method.
She pleaded through tears<\/a>: \u201cCan I please hug my mom?\u201d
Pike entered prison, where she was placed into solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day and prescribed Prozac to treat her obsessive-compulsive disorder. Early on, she struggled to express remorse.
\u201cIt took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I\u2019d done,\u201d Pike said in her clemency petition.
Three years ago, Bethany Brand, a psychologist specializing in trauma, was asked by Pike\u2019s lawyers to assess whether she suffers from psychological disorders and consider if any contributed to the crime.
She sat with Pike at her Nashville prison and reviewed police reports, past medical examinations and other files in her case detailing physical and sexual abuse. Brand learned that Pike\u2019s parents were not stable figures in her life. Her mother\u2019s boyfriends and other men had molested her from a young age, the files said. She did poorly in school, living with other family members in West Virginia and North Carolina. At 17 \u2014 one year before she would take part in Slemmer\u2019s murder \u2014 Pike reported to North Carolina police that she was walking to the store when a man threw her to the ground and raped her. No one was ever arrested.
In her final report, Brand wrote that the adults in Pike\u2019s life failed her. Doctors only diagnosed a bipolar disorder a few years after she was already in prison.
The level of trauma Pike was subjected to \u201cis almost impossible to grasp because it is so severe,\u201d Brand wrote.
She told NBC News that medications in prison have helped Pike tremendously and that she now has \u201cempathy and great regret\u201d for what she did. But, she added, Pike\u2019s case is a lesson of the need for greater awareness surrounding women\u2019s mental health and recognizing trauma and untreated mental illness.
\u201cIn Christa\u2019s case, nobody was trying to get her help,\u201d Brand said.
May Martinez is unconvinced that the person responsible for mutilating her daughter\u2019s body and leaving her nude from the waist up could change.
Martinez recalled how, after the investigation ended, she did not realize all of her daughter\u2019s body parts weren\u2019t buried with her remains, as some had been retained as trial evidence. She had to pick up Slemmer\u2019s skull from the courthouse, and remembers that the medical examiner\u2019s office mailed her other parts later. (The office said it rarely retains human remains as it had 30 years ago because of better technology, enhanced photography and lab work.)
\u201cWe had her buried in a Catholic cemetery,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cAnd she had to be dug up every time they mailed me body parts.\u201d
Recently, she said, she has refused to communicate with Pike directly. The only way she can get justice now is when she watches Pike be executed.
\u201cI will sit there with her picture in my hand,\u201d Martinez said of her daughter, \u201cand as she gets hooked up to a needle to go to sleep, she can look at the picture.\u201d
Given the rarity of the execution of a female prisoner, Tennessee corrections officials say they would make an effort to fulfill certain requests made by Pike. That includes using female guards when she is moved from her all-women\u2019s prison in Nashville to the nearby Riverbend Maximum Security Institution within 24 hours of her planned execution. An all-female execution team may also be assigned.
At least one exception is expected to be a male physician who was involved in a failed lethal injection execution earlier this year that had to be called off when a suitable vein could not be located on the prisoner. Dr. Mark Walton Fowler<\/a> told NBC News that he intends to participate in Pike\u2019s execution.
Pike\u2019s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Mikey Noechel, a Buddhist teacher, says he will also be permitted in the execution chamber. He plans to bless the space and chant and meditate, focusing on a Buddhist prayer of \u201cloving-kindness\u201d with Pike.
Noechel, who has not previously been a spiritual adviser to someone on death row, said they have spent time speaking openly about life, death and gratitude. Pike, he added, doesn\u2019t shy away from what she did.
\u201cShe did something terrible. Awful. I hate that it happened and I feel deep compassion for Colleen Slemmer\u2019s family,\u201d Noechel said. \u201cBut Christa is proof that redemption and change are possible.\u201d
He believes all Pike wanted was to be loved and for someone, especially those she trusted, to notice her.
In the letter shared by Noechel, Pike wrote that she is thankful for the support and has felt \u201cmore love in the last two weeks than I have my entire life.\u201d
\u201cI am humbled beyond words,\u201d she wrote, scribbling a heart at the bottom of the note.
Erik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.
Abigail Brooks is a producer for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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