What happens next after Christa Pike’s execution is stopped at the 11th hour
Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual abuse and rape which some readers may find distressing.
The execution of Christa Pike has been halted by a federal appeals court, just one hour before it was scheduled to take place on 30 September, and now the due process has been set in motion.
Despite having had her execution by lethal injection date set one year ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has approved a request for a 'stay of execution for Pike' last minute.
This means that Pike, who has been on death row for 30 years, will no longer be executed until otherwise stated by the court.
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Pike was about to become the first woman to be executed in the state in 200 years, after the 1995 torture and murder of Colleen Slemmer, for which she was sentenced to death in 1996.
But now her planned execution will not go through today as judges will now review whether her allegations of sexual abuse and rape as a child were fully considered prior to her landmark sentencing – something which has been previously spoken about by Pikes attorneys.
The court said: “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."
Pike's lawyers have been steadfastly filling paperwork in the three decades since she was sentenced that revolve around the argument that her childhood issues, age and mental health problems were factors for consideration.
However, those were denied.
The office of Jonathan Skrmetti, the state attorney general, issued a statement after the news broke, per the Guardian, which saw him say: “We will continue to advocate for the lawfully imposed sentence as the courts work through this technical issue. It is common in capital cases for the defense to raise last-minute objections following decades of litigation in numerous courts. We are asking the supreme court of the United States to lift the stay.”
What this means for Pike is that there will be a legal review by the Sixth Circuit of all of the evidence surrounding her childhood abuse and mental state was adequately presented and then considered before she was handed her 1996 death sentence.
The panel stated: "The State responds that Pike’s motion is properly considered a second or successive habeas petition and asserts that Pike must comply with § 2244(b). It argues that Pike does not challenge the integrity of the federal proceedings but rather attempts to relitigate the merits of her first habeas petition, rendering her motion a second habeas petition. See id. The State contends that Pike’s motion seeks to reassert her ineffective assistance of counsel claim, which was based on her trial counsel’s alleged failure to introduce evidence of or even investigate her history of child sexual abuse."
"On August 13, 2026, the State of Tennessee, for the first time, conceded that Ms. Pike had been the victim of child sexual abuse and rape," her attorneys wrote.
If the panel believes this could have meant her constitutional protections were violated, then the stay could become permanent – stopping her from being put to death.
However, the Tennessee attorney general's office has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule the stay, with Yahoo! reporting the office having written: "This Court should vacate the stay. The Sixth Circuit granted a stay—that Pike did not even request—without determining that Pike is likely to succeed on the merits and without addressing the last-minute nature of her (motion to reopen old proceedings)."
According to the outlet, there’s a few things that could happen from here, such as reopening the proceeding in the Eastern District of Tennessee, or the court could surmise that the proceedings in her trial sufficiently took into consideration her past and then perhaps lift the stay and reschedule the execution.
Britt Jones