US4 min(s) read
What does 'stay of execution' mean as killing of death row inmate Christa Gail Pike is halted by court
Here's what a stay of execution means, as Christa Pike's execution was halted just an hour before she was set to face the death penalty.
The 50-year-old death row inmate was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 10:00AM CDT at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday (September 30) after being convicted of murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1996.
But just one hour before her scheduled execution, it was announced that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals approved a last-minute request for a stay of execution for Pike.
The inmate's attorney released a statement after the news, stating: "The court has stayed this recognizing the serious concerns about Christa’s scheduled execution," cited by WKRN.
What does 'stay of execution' mean?
A stay of execution is a court order that temporarily pauses a scheduled execution.
It doesn't cancel the death sentence or mean the person has been spared. It just means the state carrying out the execution must pause until the court resolves the legal issue raised.
Once that's settled, the stay can be lifted and a new execution date set, or, less often, the sentence could eventually be overturned or commuted.
What happens next depends on the outcome of those proceedings and any further court orders.
Why was Pike sentenced to death?
The inmate, her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and friend Shadolla Peterson were students at their Knoxville Job Corps vocational center when Slemmer was killed in January 1995.
Prosecutors have argued Pike believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend.
According to court filings and trial testimony, she struck the victim with a piece of asphalt before dragging her into nearby woods, torturing her and slitting her throat with a box cutter.
She was also accused of keeping a piece of Slemmer's skull as a souvenir after the killing.
Pike and Shipp later confessed to the murder, and both were convicted the following year of first-degree murder. Pike was sentenced to death, while Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Peterson, who was 18 at the time of the murder and had acted as a lookout for the other two, appeared as a witness for the prosecution and received probation.
Lawyers have pointed to Pike's age, trauma, and mental illness
Pike does not deny killing Slemmer, but her attorneys and supporters have argued that the state should take into account her age at the time of the crime, her history of childhood violence, neglect, and sexual abuse, and the bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses she received in prison.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell has contended that her death sentence is an outlier because other people sentenced to death in Tennessee for crimes committed at the age of 18 have since had those sentences vacated.
"I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done," Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition.
She added: "Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime."
The victim's mom, May Martinez, has repeatedly said she supports the execution.
"I would feel better that she felt the same pain that Colleen did," she said, as cited by BBC News. "My heart breaks every single day because I keep reliving it and reliving it, and I can't no more, and I want this to happen before I die.
"There's not a day goes by that I don't think about Colleen or how she died and how rough it was. I just want Christa down so I can end it, relieve my daughter, so she finally can be resting," she added.
Martinez revealed that a group raised money for her and her husband to travel from Florida to witness the execution.
It was not immediately clear what the court meant by a "short stay" and whether it was possible that Pike's execution could still proceed later on September 30.