NASHVILLE, TN. (THECOUNT) — Christa Pike, Tennessee’s only woman on death row, had her execution cleared to proceed Wednesday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a last-minute stay that had halted her lethal injection less than two hours before it was scheduled.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 10 a.m. Wednesday, September 30, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the 1995 murder of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, 19.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued the temporary stay at 8:17 a.m. CDT Wednesday, giving the court additional time to consider a legal challenge raised by Pike’s attorneys. Tennessee then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the stay and allow the execution to move forward.
The Supreme Court granted Tennessee’s request Wednesday evening. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
The Supreme Court’s decision cleared the way for Tennessee to proceed with the execution but did not resolve the underlying legal claims raised by Pike’s attorneys. As of the latest reports, it had not been confirmed that the execution had actually been carried out.
Pike’s lawyers were seeking to reopen litigation involving her history of childhood sexual abuse and other mitigating evidence. They argued that her trial attorneys failed to adequately investigate and present that history during the sentencing phase of her case.
According to court filings, Pike’s attorneys say she was sexually abused by her grandmother’s boyfriend beginning before preschool and continuing through kindergarten. They also say she was raped by a neighbor at age 11 and by a stranger at age 17.
Her lawyers have also cited a suicide attempt at age 12 and diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. They are seeking to have Pike’s death sentence replaced with a sentence of life imprisonment.
Pike is not denying that she participated in Slemmer’s killing. Prosecutors said Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, tortured and killed Slemmer at a Knoxville Job Corps facility in 1995.
Pike was 18 at the time of the murder, while Shipp was 17. Shipp was convicted for his role in the killing and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. He remains incarcerated in Tennessee after being denied parole in October 2025, with his next parole review 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 Sixth Circuit’s stay came after a federal district court determined that Pike’s latest filing should be treated as a second or successive habeas petition. Pike challenged that determination, and the appeals court issued the temporary stay while considering whether her claim could proceed.
The state opposed the latest challenge and asked the Supreme Court to lift the stay. Before Wednesday’s temporary halt, the Supreme Court had already denied a separate request from Pike seeking to stop the execution over challenges involving Tennessee’s lethal-injection protocol.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee also denied Pike’s clemency request, leaving the execution scheduled for Wednesday.
The Supreme Court’s order did not explain its reasoning. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, dissented from the decision to vacate the Sixth Circuit’s stay.
If Tennessee carries out the execution, Pike would become the first woman executed by the state in roughly two centuries. She would also be the only person executed by Tennessee in the modern death-penalty era for a crime committed at age 18.
Riverbend Maximum Security Institution is located in Nashville, the Tennessee capital and seat of Davidson County. The prison is in the Cockrill Bend area west of downtown Nashville along the Cumberland River.
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