NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Tennessee to execute Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday, overturning a last-minute stay that stalled the state’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.
Pike, 50, was initially scheduled to die by lethal injection in the morning for a killing she committed at age 18, and witnesses 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. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.
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A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Correction said it would proceed with Pike’s execution Wednesday night ahead of a midnight cutoff on the state’s execution order.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
Decision stopping execution was swiftly appealed
After the stay was issued, Tennessee’s attorney general immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Witnesses and media remained at the prison while the high court considered the case.
The attorney general’s office said in its appeal that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent that the decision to vacate the stay interfered with the Sixth Circuit court’s handling of the case and “unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim.”
Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse that included being 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 filing.
Pike’s case renewed debate on the death penalty for teens
As the execution date drew near, the case renewed debate over the death penalty for young offenders.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.
After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”
“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,” Pike said in a statement.
Victim’s mother says she is waiting for death sentence
Slemmer’s mother wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.
Martinez said a group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the execution. She didn’t respond to a message Wednesday after the execution was halted.
Martinez said her daughter’s age also should matter in deciding Pike’s fate.
“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst,” she said, noting that her daughter would have turned 51 earlier in September.
The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.
Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
Executions of women are rare in the US
Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Older records can be spotty, though, so it is difficult to know precise details about the last woman who was put to death there.
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the center.
Most recently, in 2023, Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021 the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that it put a female inmate to death.
Pike would be the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.
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Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.
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