NASHVILLE, TN. (THECOUNT) — Christa Pike, Tennessee’s only woman on death row, was granted a last-minute stay Wednesday morning just before she was scheduled to be executed for the 1995 murder of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 10 a.m. Wednesday, September 30, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued the stay shortly before the scheduled execution, ordering that the death sentence remain stayed until further order of the court.
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The three-judge Sixth Circuit panel voted 2-1 to issue the short stay while it considers Pike’s latest filing. Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Jane Stranch wrote that the interests of justice and the impending execution warranted additional time to analyze the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on their merits.
Pike’s attorneys are challenging the handling of evidence concerning her history of childhood sexual abuse and rape. They argue that recent positions taken by the state undermine earlier proceedings in which Pike’s claims of abuse were disputed and that the history was not adequately presented to the jury that sentenced her to death.
According to court filings, Pike’s attorneys say she was sexually abused by her grandmother’s boyfriend beginning before she was in preschool and continuing into kindergarten. They also say she was raped by a neighbor at age 11 and by a stranger at 17.
Her lawyers have further cited a suicide attempt at age 12 and diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder in arguing that her death sentence should be reconsidered in favor of life imprisonment without parole. The defense is not denying that Pike participated in Slemmer’s killing.
The state has opposed the latest filing, arguing that Pike is attempting to revive claims concerning the effectiveness of her trial counsel that have already been litigated.
Sixth Circuit Judge Richard Griffin, who dissented from Wednesday’s stay, characterized the filing as a last-minute effort lacking merit, according to reporting on the court’s order. The majority instead concluded that additional time was warranted before the execution could proceed.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, killed Slemmer, 19, in Knoxville in 1995. Prosecutors said the pair attacked Slemmer at a Job Corps facility, with Pike striking her with a piece of asphalt after an assault that included cutting a pentagram into Slemmer’s body.
Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the murder, was convicted for his role in Slemmer’s death and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. He remains incarcerated in Tennessee. His most recent parole request was denied in October 2025, and his next parole review is scheduled for 2031.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. She has remained on Tennessee’s death row since 1996.
The execution had already survived several legal challenges. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Pike’s petition for review and her separate application seeking a stay of execution. The Supreme Court’s order left the execution scheduled to proceed Wednesday unless another court intervened.
That intervention came Wednesday morning when the Sixth Circuit issued its stay. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said the state would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court’s decision and allow the execution to proceed.
If the stay remains in effect, Pike will remain on death row while the Sixth Circuit considers the issues raised in her latest filing. The court’s order does not resolve whether her sentence will ultimately be changed or whether her execution will eventually proceed.
Pike’s case has received national attention because she would have been the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than two centuries. She also would have been the only person executed by the state under its modern death-penalty system for a crime committed while she was a teenager.
Riverbend Maximum Security Institution is located in Nashville, the capital of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. The prison is in the Cockrill Bend area west of downtown Nashville along the Cumberland River.
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