Court halts execution of Christa Pike, first woman in Tennessee on death row in 200 years

A court suspended the execution by lethal injection of Christa Pike, an inmate sentenced to death after torturing and murdering a 19-year-old woman in Tennessee three decades ago.

This news comes less than 24 hours after Bill Lee, governor of Tennessee, denied the clemency request filed by Pike's attorneys on behalf of their client. The Supreme Court, to which the inmate turned as a last resort to avoid her execution, also did not uphold Pike's petition.

"After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike's request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene," Lee said.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided to order a temporary stay in order to "properly analyze the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits," according to a report by The Hill.

The case of Christa Pike

Pike's execution by lethal injection was scheduled for 10 a.m. this Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, located near Nashville.

Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 after torturing and murdering, along with her then-boyfriend, Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old student whom the couple met at a vocational training center on Jan. 12, 1995.

During the trial, Pike, who was 18 at the time, testified that a fit of jealousy led her to commit the crime, because she believed Slemmer wanted to steal her romantic partner away from her. The inmate's attorneys have always maintained that their client suffered from "a serious mental illness and nearly incapacitating trauma"—conditions for which she had been diagnosed, treated and had already recovered.

If the sentence is carried out, Pike would be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in the last two centuries. She is currently the only woman on death row in the state.