Lawyers argue Tennessee’s reversal on Pike’s abuse claims requires new federal review
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals paused the scheduled execution of Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike on Wednesday, ruling an hour before the execution was set to begin that it needed more time to consider arguments in her case.
Pike, 50, has been on death row since she was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, who was 19. Pike was 18 at the time, and she and her then-boyfriend beat, tortured and murdered Slemmer, whom they had met at a job training camp for troubled teens. If the execution had proceeded, Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
The pause came after the US Supreme Court denied a reprieve and the Tennessee governor declined to grant clemency earlier in the week. The Sixth Circuit’s intervention effectively suspended the execution despite both prior rulings.
At the center of Pike’s appeal is a shift in the state’s position on whether Pike was sexually abused as a child. Pike’s lawyers said that for years, the state of Tennessee argued in court that Pike had lied about being sexually abused as a child. At a recent hearing about her execution method, however, the State said it does not dispute that she suffered sexual abuse and rape.
Pike’s legal team asked the appeals court to send her motion back to the district court, arguing that if federal courts based their earlier review on the state’s prior claim that she was lying, the federal review was affected.
The case remains pending before the Sixth Circuit.