Appeals court pauses Christa Gail Pike's execution in Tennessee
The 6th Circuit said it will review whether Pike’s childhood abuse and rape allegations were fully considered before sentencing.
- On Wednesday, a federal appeals court paused the execution of Christa Gail Pike, 50, who was scheduled for lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the 1995 murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer.
- Convicted of stabbing and beating 19-year-old Slemmer, Pike and her boyfriend were classmates at a job training facility in Knoxville, where the case gained notoriety for a pentagram carved into the victim's body, fueling "satanic panic" fears of the 1990s.
- Following Monday's clemency denial by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and the Supreme Court's Tuesday refusal to intervene, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell claims Pike's sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee had their death sentences vacated.
- Victim's mother May Martinez said she wants the execution carried out after waiting decades for justice. "Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run," Martinez said.
- Executing women remains rare, with only 18 put to death in the country since 1976, representing about 1% of all executions. If carried out, Pike's sentence would be Tennessee's first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.
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The U.S. Federal Court of Appeal suspended the death penalty for the murder of Christa Pike an hour before the execution of the sentence, ordered a review of whether the convicted person ' s allegations of sexual violence during her childhood at the time of her death sentence in 1996 had been fully taken into account, and the execution of the sentence had been suspended when witnesses had already met at the Nashville maximum security prison…
Christy Pike ' s execution for her murder in 1995 had been suspended about an hour before the trial, and the Court had decided to verify whether additional arguments had been considered.
Execution of lone woman on Tennessee’s death row paused by federal appeals court - Regional Media News
(NEW YORK) - The execution of the only woman on Tennessee's death row was paused at the 11th hour as a federal appeals court reviews the case. The state has since asked the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate the appeals court's stay. Christa Pike, 50, [...]
Christa Pike's execution was scheduled for Wednesday at noon (Chile time) in Tennessee, United States. However, shortly before the scheduled time, a federal court temporarily suspended the procedure to review some records that her lawyers claimed were not considered at all when Pike was sentenced to death at age 18. Pike, currently 50, was convicted of the murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old girl she tortured and killed in 1995, when she wa…
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