Christa Pike Execution Back On The Books ... After Supreme Court Loss

Published September 30, 2026 5:31 PM PDT | Updated September 30, 2026 6:03 PM PDT

Tennessee can move forward with convicted murderer Christa Pike's execution, the Supreme Court has ruled.

On Wednesday, the court decided to lift the stay of execution that had been ordered just an hour before her lethal injection. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Pike's lawyers were trying to get her sentence changed to life in prison, arguing that her attorneys had failed to present her history of sexual abuse and mental health conditions. That's why her execution was paused just an hour before her scheduled lethal injection.

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In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor said the decision to vacate the stay "interferes with the Sixth Circuit's routine administrative handling of a capital case and unnecessarily prevents the court from giving due consideration to Pike's claim."

She went on to say ... "I see no reason to short-circuit the ordinary process of the appellate review, particularly in light of the grave consequences of an erroneous decision."

If executed, Pike would be the first woman in over 200 years to be put to death in the state of Tennessee.

She was convicted for the 1995 murder of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, where she bashed her in the head with a piece of asphalt, carved a pentagram into her chest, and kept a piece of her skull as a trophy ... and ultimately sentenced to death.

Court records say Pike had been sexually abused by her grandmother's boyfriend before she could enter preschool, was raped by a neighbor when she was 11, and again by a stranger when she was 17. She reportedly suffers from bipolar disorder and PTSD.

Pike never denied killing Colleen, but her lawyers argued that the jury that sentenced her to death never heard about her history of abuse.