Christa Pike execution can proceed after Supreme Court lifts stay
The Supreme Court removed a last-minute pause on Christa Pike’s execution, while her underlying claims remained unresolved.
By Georgia Hale · Staff Writer
2 min read
The Christa Pike execution Supreme Court ruling cleared Tennessee to move ahead after the justices vacated a temporary stay issued hours before her scheduled lethal injection on Sept. 30, 2026.
The order removed the immediate legal block to Pike’s execution for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. It did not decide the underlying dispute raised by Pike’s lawyers over earlier litigation about childhood abuse and mitigating evidence.
What did the Supreme Court rule on Christa Pike’s execution?
The U.S. Supreme Court vacated the stay imposed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, according to Tennessee Lookout. That gave the state permission to proceed with the scheduled execution.
Tennessee’s Department of Correction said after the order that the execution would take place Wednesday night, Tennessee Lookout reported. The available reports do not independently confirm that the execution was ultimately carried out.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Sotomayor wrote that lifting the stay stopped the Sixth Circuit from giving Pike’s claim full consideration and cut short the normal appellate process, according to Tennessee Lookout.
Why had the Sixth Circuit paused the execution?
Pike, 50, had been due to be executed by lethal injection at 10 a.m. CDT at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The Sixth Circuit issued its stay shortly before that time so it could examine a Rule 60(b) motion and decide whether it was, procedurally, a second or successive federal habeas petition.
Pike’s lawyers argued that Tennessee’s more recent acknowledgment of her history of childhood sexual abuse and neglect undermined prior court proceedings. They contend trial counsel did not adequately present mitigating evidence about that history during the sentencing phase, FOX 17 reported.
The state took the opposite view in its application asking the Supreme Court to lift the stay. Tennessee argued that Pike had already unsuccessfully litigated the mitigation claim and that the new filing was an improper attempt to reopen it. The state’s application can be read here.
What is the background to Pike’s case?
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for Slemmer’s killing in 1995. The Tennessee Supreme Court set Sept. 30, 2026, as her execution date a year earlier, according to the state’s Supreme Court filing.
The Sixth Circuit’s pause did not overturn either Pike’s conviction or sentence, FOX 17 reported. The Supreme Court’s action was likewise a ruling on the temporary stay, rather than a decision resolving whether Pike’s earlier legal representation was ineffective or whether the abuse-related evidence should change the outcome.
This story draws on original reporting from CBS News.