Appeals Court Grants Last-Minute Stay of Christa Pike Execution

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Shortly before Christa Pike was scheduled to be killed, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals granted an 11th-hour stay of execution in Nashville on Wednesday morning.

Pike's appeals were mostly exhausted, including a late-Tuesday denial by the U.S. Supreme Court and earlier decisions by the Tennessee Supreme Court and Gov. Bill Lee allowing the execution to move forward.

The motion Pike’s attorneys made was not a new habeas petition, but rather a contention that the state changed its position on her childhood abuse.

“She states that the State recently reversed its litigation position that she is a liar who fabricated sexual abuse,” the order reads. “Pike contends that the State’s concession of her history of child sexual abuse and rape ‘erodes the foundation’ of her state court proceedings.”

During the special master hearing in August, a lawyer from the state said: “The state does not dispute the terrible things that Miss Pike suffered. I think everybody in this courtroom wishes that those things had never happened to Miss Pike.”

Read the appellate court decision here.

The appellate court found that a stay was necessary in order to resolve the issue.

Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office says it will appeal the order.

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“We will continue to advocate for the lawfully imposed sentence as the courts work through this technical issue,” Skrmetti's office says in a statement. “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.”

Pike, who would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 18 at the time of the killing. Her co-defendant Tadaryl Shipp — 17 years old at the time of the murder — received a life sentence and is now eligible for parole. Advocates have asked the governor to commute Pike’s death sentence, saying that for years she experienced emotional, sexual and physical abuse that began when she was a toddler.

On Wednesday morning, far more people were on the protester lawn than usual — more than 60 on the “against” side of the fence, where the crowd is usually about half that size, and at least 15 on the “for” side, which often has only one person. The case also drew a much larger media presence, reflecting national interest.

In August, Special Master Judge Mark Ward announced he would not block Pike’s execution. Ward had been appointed to hear arguments about whether Pike’s medical and psychological conditions would cause a torturous death, violating the Eighth Amendment right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment. At a three-day hearing, Pike’s attorneys also pointed to the sexual abuse and trauma she was subjected to as a child. She suffered from bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. After evaluating Pike, clinical psychologist Dr. Bethany Brand described her case as “truly extreme.” In an amicus brief to the Tennessee Supreme Court, a group of experts said Pike’s execution could cause her to “feel and believe that she is being raped to death.”

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, told the Banner that her daughter volunteered with the Special Olympics and helped children with disabilities at her school in Florida. She loved to build and take apart computers, and one of her favorite T-shirts read “computer geek.” Martinez made the shirt into a teddy bear, which she still has today. 

Over the years, Martinez said, Tennessee has intermittently returned her daughter’s remains. Eventually, because of the memories of her daughter, Martinez and the rest of her family felt they had to leave town.

“I couldn’t take the area anymore,” she told the Banner. “There’s too many memories. The school, the skating rink, the movies, it’s just all there.” 

Despite fundraising efforts from a victim’s advocacy organization, Martinez and her husband didn’t have enough money for plane tickets to Nashville. But they made the 600-mile drive to witness Pike’s execution, she said, “so I can remember that she is gone and I don’t have to fear that she’s going to pop up somewhere.” 

This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.