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Convicted Tennessee killer Christa Pike is again set to face execution after the U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday vacated a last-minute stay that had temporarily spared her from becoming the first woman executed in the state since the early 1800s.
The Supreme Court granted Tennessee’s application to vacate the stay issued Wednesday morning by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, clearing the way for the state to carry out Pike’s execution.
In a 2-1 split decision, the Sixth Circuit issued a stay “until further notice” as the court weighed motions filed by Pike’s attorneys and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.
The state immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, seeking to have the stay lifted.
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An undated portrait photograph of Colleen Slemmer provided by her mother. (May Martinez/Special to the News Sentinel)
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the Supreme Court’s decision, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Sotomayor argued that the Sixth Circuit should have been given time to consider Pike’s pending legal challenge before the execution proceeded.
“In capital cases, “[a]ppreciation of our own fallibility, and respect for the judgment of an appellate tribunal,” demand caution before “acting irretrievably.””
She added that the Supreme Court “chooses to overlook that principle precisely when it matters most.”
Pike, 50, was 18 in 1995 when she, her boyfriend and another person beat, kicked and stabbed their 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer to death in a brutal “satanic” attack that Pike claimed took between 30 minutes and an hour, according to court documents.
Pike and Slemmer knew each other through a vocational program in Knoxville called the Job Corps Center, the documents state.
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Pike had accused Slemmer of “trying to get [her] boyfriend” and “running her mouth,” the case file shows. A day before the killing, she told another classmate she wanted to kill Slemmer because she “just felt mean that day,” according to the records. She was armed with a box cutter and a meat cleaver.
Pike and her accomplices lured Slemmer out, telling her they wanted to go to a music store and pick up some marijuana they’d hidden in a park nearby.
Pike attacked her, knocked her to the ground and hit her in the face with her knee and foot, according to court documents.
Christa Gail Pike is seen during her trial for the murder of Colleen A. Slemmer on March 18, 1996, in Knox County Criminal Court. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
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At one point, Slemmer broke away from Pike and tried to flee, but Pike’s boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, grabbed her and held her down while Pike slashed her with the box cutter. The victim begged for her life, but the attackers kept going. At some point, they gagged her with a hair tie.
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Shipp also carved pentagrams into the victim’s face and chest.
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Christa Gail Pike is set to face execution after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a last-minute stay on Sept. 30, 2026. She would be the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1819. (Tennessee Department of Correction via AP)
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At trial, forensic psychiatrist Dr. William Bernet testified that the crime had “satanic elements” but also appeared to involve “the phenomenon of collective aggression, in which a group of people become emotionally aroused and ‘the end result is that they engage in some kind of violent, extremely violent activity,'” court records show.
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Dr. Eric Engum testified that Pike had been diagnosed with “very severe borderline personality disorder” in addition to showing signs of cannabis dependence and depression. However, he said, she had no symptoms of brain damage or insanity.
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University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist Dr. Murray Marks testifies about the wounds to Colleen A. Slemmer’s skull during Christa Gail Pike’s murder trial in Knox County Criminal Court on March 25, 1996. (USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect)
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Pike took a piece of the victim’s crushed skull as a trophy and later showed it off in school, recounting that Slemmer had begged the trio to stop, according to court records. Pike told the friend she’d cut Slemmer’s throat a half-dozen times and then smashed her head with a rock. She showed off her bloodstained sneakers to another classmate and brought Slemmer’s skull fragment to breakfast the next morning.
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Neither Shipp nor the third attacker, Shadolla Peterson, received death sentences. Shipp was under 18 at the time and not eligible for capital punishment. Peterson testified for the state.
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Pike’s supporters counter that her defense did a poor job presenting mitigating factors before her sentencing, including untreated bipolar disorder and PTSD stemming from repeated domestic violence and sexual assaults. Just under 25,000 people had signed a petition to Gov. Bill Lee asking him to commute her death sentence to life in prison.
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Fox News’ Shannon Bream and Bill Mears contributed to this report.