Execution of US murderer Christa Pike halted an hour before it was due to happen

The execution of Tennessee inmate Christa Pike has been delayed an hour on Wednesday, pending further consideration of her case by the Sixth Circuit Appeals court. Pike, 50, has been awaiting execution since her 1996 conviction for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. The court requested additional time to evaluate the arguments in Pike's case.

The pause follows the Supreme Court's denial of a reprieve and the Tennessee governor's refusal to grant clemency to Pike earlier in the week. Her legal team contends that Tennessee officials previously claimed she lied about being sexually abused as a child, but at a recent hearing, the state acknowledged her past sexual abuse and rape.

Pike's legal team argued that if the federal courts based their ruling on the state's earlier claim, the federal review was compromised. This particular appeal is distinct from her earlier appeal to the Supreme Court, which disallowed her challenge to Tennessee's lethal injection method. The lawyers argued that Tennessee's procedures violated the Constitution by possibly causing Pike undue suffering during the execution.

Pike was 18 when she and her then-partner committed the murder of Colleen Slemmer in 1995. The crime, which included the mutilation of Slemmer's body and the carving of a pentagram into her chest, garnered significant media attention in Knoxville, Tennessee. Despite the media frenzy and accusations from Pike that she was not an adult at the time of the crime, she maintains her innocence. At the time of her incarceration, Pike was the youngest person on death row in Tennessee.