Appeals court halted Pike execution before high court action

The court action

A federal appeals court halted Tennessee’s planned execution of Christa Pike, the state’s only woman on death row. The U.S. Supreme Court later denied Pike’s request to stop the execution, allowing the state to move forward.

Pike received two injections but did not die. The Tennessee Department of Correction said she was transferred to an off-site medical facility. Her attorneys said she was being treated at a hospital but did not know her condition.

Pike, 50, would be the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than 200 years. She was 18 when she and two teenage accomplices killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995. Police said the group lured Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student, to an abandoned steam plant near the University of Tennessee, where she was tortured, cut and fatally beaten. Pike does not dispute her role in the killing.

Arguments over the execution

Pike’s lawyers argued that Tennessee’s lethal-injection procedure would cause severe psychological suffering because she has post-traumatic stress disorder. They said she experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect beginning in early childhood.

The state has not disputed that Pike endured abuse. The Tennessee attorney general’s office argued that a judge had already found it uncertain whether the execution procedure would cause greater psychological harm.

Her lawyers also said jurors who sentenced Pike to death did not hear details about her childhood. Gov. Bill Lee declined to stop the sentence after considering the case. The case history and legal arguments remain central to the proceedings.