Tennessee’s plan to execute its only female death row inmate came to a sudden stop Wednesday morning when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a stay. Christa Gail Pike had been scheduled to die that evening, which would have made her the first woman executed in Tennessee in at least 200 years. Governor Bill Lee denied her clemency request two days earlier.
Pike was convicted in 1996 for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer on the University of Tennessee campus, a case connected to the Job Corps program. In a letter written before her scheduled execution, Pike said she was not afraid to die, only nervous about the process, and that she was at peace regardless of the clemency outcome.
The stay also draws attention back to Tennessee’s recent struggles with execution protocols, which have prompted court challenges and public scrutiny. For Slemmer’s family, the case now stretches past thirty years without resolution. Where do you land on this one? Should a state’s track record with executions affect whether they move forward at all?
