Tennessee unable to carry out Christa Gail Pike execution, witnesses say

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Tennessee was not able to carry out the planned execution of a woman convicted in the 1995 killing of a classmate, according to media witnesses.

Christa Gail Pike was scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a last-minute stay by an appellate court. 

Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter told the witnesses that she would not be able to provide immediate details about what happened.

Timeline:

The Associated Press reported that officials appeared to deliver two doses of pentobarbital to Pike. At 7:46 p.m., prison officials closed the curtain to the media room, only to open it again three minutes later. Pike was heard loudly snoring and the curtain closed again at 8:06 p.m.

Witnesses reported being able to still hear Pike snoring until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. It was at that time that media officials were escorted out of the area. Emergency vehicles were seen coming and going from the prison.

Last-minute legal appeals

Earlier in the day, Supreme Court ruled it will allow the execution of Christa Gail Pike to move forward, overturning a last-minute stay that was issued by a federal appeals court in Tennessee just hours earlier. 

The appeals 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. Sotomayor called the court’s decision stunning, as it clears the way for the execution to happen "before her still-pending legal challenges to her conviction can be properly considered."

Dig deeper:

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.

SHARED: Tennessee set to execute first woman in more than 200 years for 1995 murder of classmate

It wasn’t immediately clear if Tennessee’s attorney general was appealing the decision, or how long the execution might be delayed. A phone message and email were left with a spokesperson for the attorney general's office seeking comment.

Execution witnesses had already gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the order came down at around 9 a.m. CDT.

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.

What they're saying:

"I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done," Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition. "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."

The other side:

Slemmer’s mother wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

"Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run," May Martinez said in a telephone interview.

Martinez said a group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the execution.

The backstory:

The 1995 killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. 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.

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.

Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Older records can be spotty, though, so it’s difficult to know precise details about the last woman who was put to death there.

Big picture view:

It's a rarity across the U.S. Since 1976, 18 women have been put to death in the country, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the center.

Most recently, Missouri in 2023 executed Amber McLaughlin 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 put a female inmate to death.

The Source: The Associated Press contributed to this report. The information came from the federal appeals court’s order halting Christa Gail Pike’s execution, court filings from her attorneys, statements included in her clemency petition, and comments from her attorney and Colleen Slemmer’s mother. Additional details about the 1995 murder, Pike’s conviction and Tennessee’s execution history came from prosecutors, prison officials and the Death Penalty Information Center. This story was reported from Los Angeles.