Tennessee officials were unable to carry out the execution of Christa Gail Pike for a 1995 murder on Wednesday, media witnesses said, after the lethal injection was halted for hours as courts considered a last-minute appeal.
Pike, 50, had been scheduled for execution for a killing she committed at age 18 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an appeals court ruling that stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start. Officials then attempted to go ahead with it as planned.
Officials appeared to give Pike two doses of pentobarbital.
At 7:46 p.m. prison officials closed the curtain to the media room. They raised the curtain three minutes later. Pike could be heard loudly snoring, and the curtain was closed again at 8:06 pm.
Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at about 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.
Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that the remaining scheduled execution will not take place this year.
“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” he said.
The Tennessee Department of Correction issued a statement after 11 p.m. saying that officials “followed every step” of the protocol.
“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening. Christa Pike has been transported to an off-site medical facility.”
Attorneys filed an emergency motion with the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Tennessee. It requested a halt to the execution and immediate medical care.
The filing said Pike maintained a heartbeat and was heard audibly snoring after being administered the drugs.
Media witnesses report being unable to view what was taking place. They were able to hear groans, moans and snoring for more than 40 minutes before they were escorted out.
Laura Porter, executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty issued a statement late Wednesday.
“Since the botched execution in May of this year, people from diverse political backgrounds across Tennessee have called for a pause in executions to examine the problems with the execution process. These pleas were ignored,” Porter wrote. “The state of Tennessee has shown the world it cannot be trusted to implement capital punishment in a way that preserves human dignity and the rule of law. This has to stop now.”
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution: In May state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.
More: Christa Pike’s influence from Tennessee’s death row
This is a developing story that was last updated Thursday at 6:35 a.m.
Supreme Court allows execution to go forward
The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the execution of Christa Gail Pike to go forward Wednesday, overturning a last-minute stay issued by an appeals court hours earlier (PDF).
Pike, 50, was scheduled to die by lethal injection in the morning, and witnesses had already gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the ruling, with Sotomayor writing that it clears the way for the execution to happen “before her still-pending legal challenges to her conviction can be properly considered.”
A Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson said after the high court’s decision became known that the execution would proceed Wednesday night.
Pike was 18 when classmate Colleen Slemmer was beaten and stabbed to death. The case garnered widespread attention at the time in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
Attorneys trade arguments in urgent filings
Tennessee’s execution of Christa Gail Pike for a murder she committed at age 18 was halted Wednesday about an hour before it was set to begin, as a federal appeals court sought to review whether her allegations of childhood sexual abuse and rape were fully considered at her sentencing.
The “short stay” was ordered by the 6th Circuit Court Of Appeals.
At issue are recent court filings by Christa Pike’s legal team. They argue that court proceedings were tainted by prosecutors in a way that open up a viable pathway for her to appeal. Attorneys for the state are arguing that Pike is relitigating a prior court ruling in a way that is not procedurally allowed.
“The interests of justice and the finality of Pike’s impending execution compel the entry of a short stay of execution in order to properly analyze the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits,” wrote two of the three appeals court judges.
A third judge authored a dissent, calling the effort “another last-ditch meritless effort.”
Pike, now 50, and her boyfriend were convicted of stabbing and beating 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville in 1995.
The case garnered widespread attention at the time in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
Tennessee’s attorney general immediately appealed the stay to the U.S. Supreme Court (PDF). The filing accuses Pike’s team of “gamesmanship” — and it suggests those judges could have assessed the likelihood of her claims and allowed the execution to take place. It also says the stay is causing harm to Slemmer’s family.
Pike’s legal team responded quickly as well (PDF), arguing that she did not receive effective representation at trial. They’re pushing back on the idea that their motion was filed at the last-minute to disrupt the execution, and they provided a timeline of recent court rulings.
“It 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’s moral culpability,” they wrote.
Execution witnesses — including WPLN’s Catherine Sweeney — had already gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the order came down at around 9 a.m. A back-and-forth followed. At about 10 a.m., corrections officials began to move media witnesses into the prison. Around noon, media witnesses were moved back outdoors. By 1:30 they were taken back inside.
More: Christa Pike’s spiritual advisor on Buddhism, execution and the responsibility to respond
As the execution date drew near, it renewed debate over the death penalty for young offenders.
Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue the state should consider Pike’s age at the time, mental illness and a history of severe sexual abuse that included being raped from the time she was a toddler. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds sentenced to death in Tennessee have had their sentences vacated.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request from Pike’s attorneys to halt the execution.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Monday denied Pike clemency.
Reported earlier
Christa Pike was 18 when she killed a classmate in a jealous rage and became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row. Now 50, she is scheduled to be put to death Wednesday in what would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in 200 years.
Pike and her boyfriend were convicted in the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area where she and her boyfriend tortured and killed Slemmer. The case got widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the ages of the people involved and because a satanic symbol was carved into the victim’s body.
Pike does not deny her guilt, but her attorneys and supporters argue a death sentence is not appropriate for a crime committed at that age by a teen with untreated mental illness after a childhood of brutal sexual abuse and neglect. Slemmer’s mother wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday that he would not grant clemency. Pike’s attorneys have asked the Supreme Court to stay the execution.
The request for clemency points to Pike’s traumatic past
Pike’s attorneys said she experienced an exceptionally traumatic and abusive childhood.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike was sexually abused starting from when she was a toddler and that she was raped at ages 11 and 17. He said Pike’s lawyers at the penalty phase of her trial did not present the jury with what he said was critical information about her past or argue that her age should be a consideration.
Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Pike told police she initially only wanted to fight Slemmer but ended up killing her in a frenzied attack. In her clemency petition, Pike’s attorneys said her untreated mental illness and background made her unable to “put the brakes on.”
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition.
Ferrell said more today is known about adolescent brain development and that Pike’s death sentence is an outlier. He noted that Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole because of his age. He was denied parole last year. A third teen admitted to being an accessory and received probation.
In the modern death penalty era, Ferrell said, other 18-year-olds who were sentenced to death in Tennessee have since had their sentences reduced.
The Death Penalty Information Center said 275 people nationwide have been executed for crimes they committed at age 18, 19 or 20 in the modern death penalty era, but that death sentences for those in that age group have become increasingly rare.
“If Christa Pike was tried today, I do not believe a jury that knew about the documented sexual abuse and neglect she experienced as a child would sentence her to death,” Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said.
The victim’s mother wants the execution to go forward
Speaking by telephone from Florida, Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, also pointed to her daughter’s age and said Slemmer never got a chance to grow up.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” Martinez said.
Martinez said her daughter volunteered with the Special Olympics, loved roller skating and wanted to pursue a career in computers.
“She was easygoing. She was a computer geek to begin with. She and my husband would build and tear apart the computers constantly,” Martinez said. “She trusted everybody, and that was her downfall.”
She said her daughter called her from Job Corps on the night of the murder, but the call was dropping because of bad reception. When Martinez called back, her daughter had already gone out.
“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst. Colleen’s birthday was last week. She would have been 51,” Martinez said.
The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into her body.
Executions of female inmates are rare in Tennessee and nationwide
If Pike’s execution proceeds as scheduled, it would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman since 1820, Maher said.
Executions of female inmates are also rare in the U.S. Since 1976, 18 women have been executed in the country, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the center.
Most recently, Missouri in 2023 executed Amber McLaughlin, a transgender woman, for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government has put a female inmate to death. Georgia executed a woman in 2015.
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