Pike,<\/a> 50, had been scheduled to be executed on Wednesday for a murder she committed at age 18. Her killing would have been Tennessee\u2019s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.<\/p>\nAn appeals court ruling stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start, but a Supreme Court ruling later overturned the stay.<\/p>\n
Following the top court\u2019s ruling, officials attempted to go ahead with the execution as planned.<\/p>\n
At 7:46pm local time (23:46 GMT), prison officials closed the curtain separating Pike from the media viewing room. It was raised three minutes later, when witnesses said Pike could be heard snoring loudly.<\/p>\n
The curtain was closed again at 8:06pm. Witnesses continued to hear Pike snoring until the microphone was switched off at about 8:53pm (00:53 GMT), when they were told to leave the area. Emergency vehicles were seen coming and going from the prison.<\/p>\n
Earlier, the execution had been halted when the 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay.<\/p>\n
The appeals court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike\u2019s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered during her sentencing.<\/p>\n
Later on Wednesday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the execution. Its conservative majority did not explain the decision, while the three liberal justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that vacating the stay \u201cunnecessarily prevents\u201d the appeals court from giving due consideration to Pike\u2019s claim.<\/p>\n
Tennessee\u2019s attorney general had argued that delaying the execution traumatised the family of Pike\u2019s victim, Colleen Slemmer, and rewarded what it called \u201cabusive delay tactics\u201d.<\/p>\n
The killing in 1995<\/p>\n
Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.<\/p>\n
Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.<\/p>\n
Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse, including that she was raped from early childhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is inconceivable that in the 21st century, the criminal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider those facts in weighing the defendant\u2019s moral culpability,\u201d her lawyers wrote in a filing.<\/p>\n
After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n
In her clemency petition, she said she had initially intended to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she could not \u201cput the brakes on\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I\u2019d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone\u2019s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,\u201d Pike said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Slemmer\u2019s mother has said she wants Pike\u2019s death sentence carried out after waiting decades for the execution.<\/p>\n
Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.<\/p>\n
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been executed in the US, representing about 1 percent of all executions, according to the centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published On 1 Oct 20261 Oct 2026 | Updated: 3 hours agoUpdated: 3 hours ago Christa Pike, convicted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":916467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[238873,43,44,41,39,42,40,772,1690],"class_list":["post-916466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-death-penalty","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}