Federal Appeals Court Issues Temporary Stay in Tennessee Execution of Christa Pike
A 6th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a short stay of execution for Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike as judges review claims that childhood abuse evidence was inadequately considered.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals intervened less than two hours before a scheduled lethal injection, granting a temporary stay for Christa Pike, a 50-year-old inmate on Tennessee’s death row. The court said it will consider Pike’s argument that evidence of sexual abuse she suffered as a child was not properly weighed during sentencing.
State officials promptly asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the stay and allow the execution to proceed. Pike was slated to be executed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, which would have made her the first woman put to death in Tennessee in over two centuries.
Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer, a crime she committed at age 18 with her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, who received a life sentence with parole eligibility. Her attorneys contend that a history of violence, neglect, repeated sexual abuse, and diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder warrant a sentence reduction to life without parole. Governor Bill Lee denied a clemency request, while Slemmer’s mother publicly supported the execution.
The case has drawn international attention, with United Nations human-rights experts urging a commutation of Pike’s death sentence. Women represent a small fraction of U.S. executions since 1976, and Pike would be the only individual in Tennessee’s modern death-penalty era sentenced for a crime committed as a teenager.