Why did the appeals court order a pause?

In Tennessee, the planned Christa Pike execution was halted a little more than an hour before it was due to be carried out. In a ruling on Wednesday, judges on the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said they needed more time to review the arguments in the case. The court did not say how long the suspension would last.

The development came after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request to delay the execution and after Tennessee Governor declined to grant clemency earlier this week. Tennessee's attorney general said the state would continue to defend the death sentence while the courts review a technical issue, and said it would ask the Supreme Court to lift the stay.

What arguments did the defense make?

Lethal injection and a new dispute in the case

Pike’s lawyers argued that Tennessee’s lethal injection method could cause more pain than is permitted to carry out a death sentence, making it unconstitutional. The latest stay stems from that challenge to the execution method, unlike the request the Supreme Court declined to hear.

The defense also said the state had long dismissed Pike’s claims that she was sexually abused as a child, but did not dispute those abuse and rape allegations at a recent hearing. The lawyers argued that if federal courts based earlier rulings on the state’s former position, the review process may have been affected, and asked for the case to be sent back to a lower court.

  • The appeal focused on the execution method and Pike’s right to due process.
  • The defense argued that the state's change in position on childhood abuse requires the case to be reconsidered.

What stands out in the case history?

Christa Pike was tried for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike was 18 at the time and was convicted along with her former boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp of beating, torturing and killing Slemmer, whom they had met at a job-training camp for troubled youths.

The case drew wide attention because the victim was found with a pentagram carved into her chest, a symbol associated with Satanic groups. Pike said she did not carve the mark herself. Two people at the camp testified that Pike bragged before and after the killing and even showed them a piece of Slemmer’s skull.

In 1996, Pike was sentenced to death, while Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the crime, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Her lawyers say she has a documented history of childhood sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect, and argue that if she were tried today for the same crime as a young person, she might not receive the death penalty. Last year, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that there were no grounds to reduce her sentence.