The scheduled execution of Christa Pike, the Tennessee woman convicted of murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmerin 1995, has been halted at the last minute after a US appeals court issued a temporary stay less than two hours before she was due to be executed.
Pike was scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 10am on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The Tennessee Department of Correction had spent weeks preparing for the execution and had selected official media witnesses.
But shortly before the scheduled execution, the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily stopped the execution to consider Pike’s latest legal arguments. Her lawyers are challenging aspects of her death sentence, including claims that evidence concerning her history of childhood sexual abuse and trauma was not adequately considered when she was sentenced to death.
The development does not overturn Pike’s conviction or death sentence. It means only that Tennessee cannot carry out the execution while the latest stay remains in effect.
The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office has already asked the US Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court’s stay. The Supreme Court docket shows that the state’s application to vacate the stay was filed on September 30.
Pike’s case dates back more than three decades to the killing of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Job Corps centre in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Pike was 18 years old at the time of the January 1995 killing. Court records show that she was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to death in 1996.
According to court records, Slemmer was taken to a wooded area near the Job Corps centre, where she was attacked and killed.
The evidence presented at trial described a particularly violent killing. Pike and other participants were accused of beating and stabbing Slemmer. The prosecution also presented evidence concerning injuries inflicted on the victim’s body after her death.
Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, was also convicted in connection with the killing. Another participant, Shadolla Peterson, received a different sentence after cooperating with authorities.
Pike has remained on Tennessee’s death row for almost three decades.
Her latest legal challenge does not dispute that she was convicted of killing Slemmer. Instead, her lawyers are focusing on issues surrounding the death sentence itself, including whether mitigating evidence about Pike’s background and psychological condition was adequately presented.
Her lawyers have argued that Pike experienced serious childhood abuse and sexual trauma and that this history should have received greater consideration during the sentencing process. They have also pointed to diagnoses including bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Reuters reported that these issues were central to the latest clemency and court challenges.
The state has opposed the latest efforts to stop the execution.
The Tennessee Supreme Court set Pike’s execution date for September 30, 2026, after determining in September 2025 that she had completed the standard three-tier appeals process. The court also rejected her request for a certificate of commutation at the time.
Pike’s lawyers subsequently pursued additional challenges, including a separate legal challenge to Tennessee’s lethal-injection protocol.
Court filings show that Pike challenged the state’s execution procedures, arguing that her psychological conditions, including complex PTSD, could make the execution process unconstitutional as applied to her.
The US Supreme Court rejected one of Pike’s requests on September 29, denying both her application for a stay and her petition for review.
That decision appeared to leave the execution on course for Wednesday morning.
However, the subsequent Sixth Circuit order created a new pause hours before the scheduled execution, prompting the Tennessee Attorney General to return to the US Supreme Court.
The latest development has attracted international attention because Pike would have become the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than 200 years. She is also the only woman currently on Tennessee’s death row.
Pike would also have been the only person currently facing execution in Tennessee for a crime committed as a teenager under the state’s modern capital punishment system, according to reporting on the case.
The rarity of executions involving women has added to the attention surrounding the case. Reuters reported that only 18 women had been executed in the United States since 1976, compared with more than 1,600 executions overall during the same period.
Pike’s case has also drawn attention from international human-rights advocates, who have raised concerns about her background, prolonged incarceration and the application of the death penalty in her case.
However, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee rejected Pike’s clemency request on September 28, leaving the death sentence in place.
The governor’s decision came two days before the scheduled execution.
Pike had asked for her death sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment without parole. Her lawyers argued that her history and circumstances justified clemency, while the state maintained its position in support of the sentence.
The case has therefore reached a critical stage.
As of September 30, 2026, Christa Pike has not been executed. The Sixth Circuit’s temporary stay remains the immediate barrier to the execution, while the Tennessee Attorney General is asking the US Supreme Court to remove that barrier.
The Supreme Court’s decision on the state’s latest application will determine the next step in the case. Until the stay is lifted or otherwise resolved, Tennessee cannot proceed with the execution.
For now, Pike remains on death row nearly 32 years after the murder of Colleen Slemmer, while the courts continue to consider the latest legal challenge to her scheduled execution.
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