US Supreme Court clears execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee murder case
The US Supreme Court overturned a last-minute stay, allowing the execution of Christa Pike to proceed for a 1995 killing committed when she was 18.
Supreme Court overturns stay, clears path for Pike execution in Tennessee
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned a last-minute stay of execution for Christa Gail Pike, allowing Tennessee authorities to proceed with putting her to death for a murder she committed at the age of 18, abc7news.com reports.
Witnesses and media had already gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2–1 to issue a stay, halting the scheduled lethal injection. That appeals court said it needed time to consider whether Pike's allegations of childhood sexual abuse had been fully weighed during her sentencing. Tennessee's attorney general immediately appealed the stay to the Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court's decision hours later.
Pike, now 50, and her then-boyfriend were convicted of the January 1995 stabbing and beating death of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was attempting to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on 12 January 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large piece of asphalt. Her boyfriend at the time, Shipp, later admitted he was the one who carved a pentagram into Slemmer's body.
The case drew widespread attention in part because of those satanic symbols, which stoked fears of occult violence during what became known as the "satanic panic" of the 1980s and 1990s.
A sentence without parallel in Tennessee
Shipp was 17 at the time of the killing and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell argued that Pike's sentence is an outlier, noting that other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had death sentences vacated.
Tennessee has not executed a woman in at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the United States — roughly 1% of all executions. The most recent was Missouri's 2023 execution of Amber McLaughlin, believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the country. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, the first time in nearly seven decades that a female federal inmate was put to death.
Had the execution gone forward, Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year, following an execution in Florida on Tuesday.
Abuse allegations at the centre of appeals
Pike does not dispute committing the killing. Her supporters, however, argue the state failed to adequately consider her age at the time, her mental illness, and allegations of severe sexual abuse — including claims she was raped from the time she was a toddler.
"It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, the criminal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider those facts in weighing the defendant's moral culpability," her attorneys wrote in a court filing.
After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In a clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but lost control during the attack.
"I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise 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," Pike said in a statement.
Victim's family waited decades for the sentence to be carried out
Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, has said she wants the execution to proceed. Travelling from Florida with her husband — assisted by fundraising from a support group — Martinez was present to witness the execution.
"Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run," Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. She noted that her daughter would have turned 51 earlier in September.
"Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst," she said.
The attorney general's office, in its appeal to the Supreme Court, wrote that halting the execution at the last moment had traumatised Slemmer's family and rewarded what it described as "abusive delay tactics" by Pike's attorneys.
Kelley Henry, a Nashville-based attorney experienced in Tennessee death penalty law, noted that the state's execution order expires at midnight. If the deadline passes before the stay is resolved, the Tennessee Supreme Court would need to set a new execution date.
Source: Google News IE — Crime (en)