Execution of US murderer Christa Pike halted an hour before it was due to happen
Summary
The execution of Christa Pike, a Tennessee inmate convicted of murder in 1996, was stopped one hour before it was scheduled to happen. A federal appeals court wants more time to review legal arguments in her case, putting the execution pause length unknown.Key Facts
- Christa Pike was sentenced to death for murdering Colleen Slemmer in 1995 when Pike was 18 years old.
- Pike was the youngest person on death row in Tennessee at the time she was sentenced.
- Pike and her boyfriend beat and tortured Slemmer, who was found with a pentagram carved into her chest.
- Pike denied carving the pentagram herself.
- The US Supreme Court refused to stop the execution earlier this week.
- Tennessee’s governor denied Pike’s request for clemency (pardoning or reducing the sentence).
- Pike’s lawyers say the state previously claimed she lied about being sexually abused as a child but now the state does not dispute this abuse.
- Pike’s legal team argues her execution should be reconsidered because of how the courts handled this information and because she was a teenager at the time of the crime.
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