Christa Pike won a temporary federal stay of her Tennessee execution, putting on hold what would have been the state’s first female death sentence carried out in more than 200 years.
The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued the stay Wednesday morning in a 2-1 split decision “until further notice” while it weighs motions from Pike’s attorneys and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office. State lawyers immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the order, Fox News reported.
Pike, now 50, was scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 30, 2026. She has sat on death row since her conviction for the 1995 torture-murder of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer. The stay is temporary, yet it again postpones final accountability in a case marked by extreme violence and clear evidence.
Pike was 18 when she, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and another teen, Shadolla Peterson, killed Slemmer in Knoxville. Court records show the three knew one another through a Job Corps vocational program. Pike had accused Slemmer of “trying to get [her] boyfriend” and “running her mouth.”
A day before the killing, Pike told another classmate she wanted to murder Slemmer because she “just felt mean that day.”
According to those same records, the trio lured Slemmer out with a story about going to a music store and retrieving hidden marijuana in a nearby park. Once there, Pike knocked her down and struck her in the face with her knee and foot. Slemmer broke free and tried to run. Shipp grabbed her and held her while Pike slashed her with a box cutter. The victim begged for her life. They gagged her with a hair tie.
Shipp carved pentagrams into Slemmer’s face and chest. Pike later told a friend she had cut the girl’s throat a half-dozen times and smashed her head with a rock. She took a piece of the crushed skull as a trophy, showed it off at school, displayed her bloodstained sneakers, and brought the bone fragment to breakfast the next morning. Pike herself claimed the attack lasted between 30 minutes and an hour.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. William Bernet testified the crime contained “satanic elements” and showed “collective aggression,” in which a group becomes aroused and turns extremely violent. Psychologist Dr. Eric Engum diagnosed Pike with “very severe borderline personality disorder,” plus signs of cannabis dependence and depression, but found no brain damage or insanity. University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist Dr. Murray Marks detailed the skull wounds for the Knox County Criminal Court jury in March 1996.
Shipp, under 18 at the time, could not face capital punishment. Peterson testified for the state and also avoided a death sentence. Only Pike received the ultimate penalty.
Just The News noted the Sixth Circuit stay gives the appeals court time to consider Pike’s claims on the merits and would have marked the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in 200 years. The last such execution occurred in 1819. A petition with just under 25,000 signatures has urged Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence to life in prison.
Tennessee had moved forward after earlier clemency efforts failed, a pattern familiar in other capital cases where last-minute litigation collides with final judgments. Readers following similar fights have seen how clemency bids and final-meal refusals can still leave victims’ families waiting.
Death-penalty litigation often stretches across decades even when guilt is not in serious dispute. The same dynamic appears in high-profile prosecutions elsewhere, including cases where judges keep capital punishment available and defense teams work to block it. One recent example is the Tyler Robinson capital case now heading toward trial.
States continue to adjust how they carry out lawful sentences. Idaho recently made the firing squad its primary method, underscoring that jurisdictions still treat capital punishment as a serious tool of justice rather than a relic. That policy shift is detailed in coverage of Idaho’s firing-squad law.
Not every death-row story ends in execution. DNA evidence has freed inmates in other states when the original case collapsed, as happened when a Utah inmate walked free after exclusion from a 1985 killing. Pike’s case contains no such exonerating turn. The record of torture, trophy-taking, and her own statements remains intact.
The Sixth Circuit’s 2-1 order does not declare Pike innocent or revise the jury’s verdict. It simply pauses the warrant while lawyers argue. Tennessee’s prompt appeal to the Supreme Court shows the state intends to defend the sentence it lawfully obtained nearly three decades ago.
Colleen Slemmer was 19. She was beaten, slashed, carved with occult symbols, and left with part of her skull missing because three teenagers decided she talked too much and one of them “felt mean.” Pike has outlived her victim by more than 30 years. Every additional delay extends that imbalance.
When courts repeatedly interrupt a settled capital judgment without new evidence of innocence, the message to victims’ families is that finality is optional. Law-and-order states exist to close that gap, not widen it.
