Federal Appeals Court Halts Tennessee Execution of Christa Pike One Hour Before It Was to Begin
A federal appeals court halted the scheduled execution of Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, approximately one hour before it was set to begin at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Pike, now 50, was convicted of the 1995 stabbing and beating death of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in at least 200 years. The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to grant the stay, and Tennessee's attorney general immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Pike was 18 years old when she and her boyfriend, Shipp, lured classmate Colleen Slemmer to a wooded area on January 12, 1995, according to the Associated Press. Prosecutors said Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole; Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
The 6th Circuit granted the stay to review whether Pike's history of childhood sexual abuse and rape had been fully considered at sentencing, according to AP. Pike's supporters, including Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, argued that her death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had similar sentences vacated. Pike was subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
In a statement, Pike said, "I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I'd done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. 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." Her attorneys noted that she does not deny committing the killing.