Sixth Circuit pauses execution of Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike

A federal appeals panel from the Sixth Circuit ordered a stay of Christa Pike's execution just over an hour before it was scheduled to take place. Pike, 50, has been on death row since her 1996 conviction for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, Tennessee. The judges said they need additional time to consider the arguments raised by her defense team, though they did not specify how long the pause will last.

The decision follows a Supreme Court denial of a reprieve and a refusal by the Tennessee governor to grant clemency earlier in the week. Pike's attorneys contend that the state previously claimed she fabricated allegations of childhood sexual abuse, but the state now acknowledges she was a victim of abuse and rape. They asked the appeals court to return the case to the district court, arguing that the federal review may have been affected by the earlier claim.

Pike's current appeal challenges Tennessee's lethal-injection protocol, which her lawyers say could cause unnecessary suffering and thus violate constitutional protections. > "We will continue to advocate for the lawfully imposed sentence as the courts work through this technical issue," said Tennessee Attorney General in a statement. > "It is common in capital cases for the defence to raise last-minute objections following decades of litigation in numerous courts. We are asking the Supreme Court of the United States to lift the stay," the attorney added.

When Pike was 18, she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and murdered Slemmer, a fellow participant at a job-training camp for troubled teens. The case attracted extensive media attention after a pentagram was found carved into the victim's chest, a detail Pike denies. Shipp, then 17, received a life sentence with parole eligibility, while Pike was sentenced to death. Her lawyers argue that contemporary standards would likely preclude a death sentence for a teenager with her background of abuse and neglect. The Tennessee Supreme Court last year ruled that the circumstances did not merit commuting her sentence.