A federal appeals court has stayed the execution of Christa Gail Pike, who was scheduled to become Tennessee’s first woman executed in more than 200 years.
Pike, 50, was due to die by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday, after the US Supreme Court rejected an earlier bid to halt her execution.
However, hours before she was scheduled to die, the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals intervened and ordered a stay, preventing Tennessee from carrying out the death sentence until further notice.
Pike had also made an unusual request regarding the method of execution. According to The New York Post, she asked to be executed by an all-female firing squad instead of lethal injection.
Pike was convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old fellow student at a Job Corps vocational centre in Knoxville.
Prosecutors said Pike, her 17-year-old boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and 18-year-old Shadolla Peterson lured Slemmer into a wooded area, where she was tortured and killed.
The case attracted widespread attention after it emerged that a pentagram had been carved into Slemmer’s chest. Pike also kept a piece of Slemmer’s skull.
Pike and Shipp later confessed to the crime and were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996. Pike was sentenced to death, while Shipp received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.
Pike’s lawyers have argued that she is no longer the same person she was at the time of the crime, citing the abuse and trauma she experienced during childhood.
“Christa is now a 50-year-old woman who regrets her actions and understands the consequences,” her lawyers wrote.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has spoken in support of Pike’s execution.
The federal appeals court issued the stay only hours before Pike’s scheduled execution.
The court said the US District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee had determined that it lacked jurisdiction over Pike’s motion seeking to reopen the judgment that denied her habeas relief.
The appeals court subsequently ordered that Pike’s execution remain on hold pending further proceedings.
Pike’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, told Al Jazeera that the US Supreme Court could still overturn the stay, noting that the court has recently reversed some orders blocking executions.
Pike’s legal team had previously asked Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute her death sentence to life imprisonment without parole.
Her lawyers cited evidence that Pike’s mother drank heavily during pregnancy, which they argued may have affected Pike’s brain development and impulse control.
They also pointed to a history of childhood violence, neglect and sexual abuse, including rapes when Pike was 11 and 17.
Her lawyers have argued that the teenager who committed the crime is substantially different from the 50-year-old woman now facing execution.
Pike would be the only person executed in modern-era Tennessee for a crime committed while she was a teenager.
Her lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, has pointed to advances in scientific understanding of adolescent brain development and argued that those developments should be considered in her case.
Governor Lee has rejected clemency, while United Nations human rights experts have called for Pike’s sentence to be commuted.
Pike’s lawyers have raised concerns about lethal injection, citing her small veins and a blood condition that they say could make it difficult to establish an intravenous line. Tennessee authorities have disputed those claims.
The concerns come after Tennessee prison officials abandoned the planned execution of another prisoner, Tony Carruthers, in May after they reportedly failed to find a suitable vein.
The New York Post reported that Pike is also concerned that lethal injection could result in a painful death. Her lawyers have reportedly requested an all-female firing squad, with members of Slemmer’s family potentially among the witnesses.
Tennessee is not one of the five US states that currently authorise firing squads as an execution method.
In August, Pike’s lawyers also proposed hanging as an alternative, noting that Tennessee last used the method to execute a woman.
The state opposed the proposal, arguing that it did not have the necessary equipment or legal authority to carry out an execution by hanging.
A judge sided with the state but left open the possibility of an all-female execution team.
Pike is also eligible to choose electrocution because her crime was committed in 1995. Tennessee law allows prisoners whose crimes occurred before January 1999 to select the electric chair.
The death penalty remains legal in 27 US states, although four of those states have suspended its use.
Lethal injection is authorised in every state that retains capital punishment. Electrocution is permitted in nine states, gas in nine and firing squads in five. Idaho made the firing squad its primary execution method in July 2026.
Tennessee currently permits lethal injection and electrocution. Its law also provides for another constitutional method if both authorised methods are found unconstitutional.
The US has used five execution methods during the modern era: lethal injection, electrocution, gas, firing squad and hanging.
Since 1976, lethal injection has been used in 1,491 executions, compared with 163 by electrocution, 19 by gas and six by firing squad.
Hanging, once widely used, is no longer authorised as an execution method in any US state.
The Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments”. However, legal challenges to execution methods face a high threshold under US Supreme Court precedent.
Since 2008, prisoners challenging an execution method have generally been required to identify a feasible alternative that would significantly reduce the risk of severe pain.
Lethal injection requires prison officials to successfully access a vein. If the drugs enter surrounding tissue or the needle becomes blocked, the process can cause severe pain.
Other execution methods have also faced legal and practical concerns.
The electric chair may require multiple electrical shocks if the first fails to cause death. In a 2025 firing-squad execution in South Carolina, an autopsy found that two of three bullets struck the prisoner, but neither hit his heart.
Hanging can also result in prolonged strangulation if the drop is improperly calculated.
Nitrogen hypoxia has faced similar scrutiny. During the first US execution using nitrogen gas, witnesses said Kenneth Smith appeared conscious and writhed for several minutes.
Goodness Anunobi
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