In American Tennessee, a woman was to be executed for the first time in 200 years. But the execution was suspended an hour before the appointed time

50-year-old Pike has been on death row since 1996. She was found guilty of the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, committed in 1995. At the time of the crime, Pike was 18 years old. She, along with her then-boyfriend Tadarrell Shipp, beat and tortured Slemmer, whom they met at a vocational training camp for troubled teenagers.

On September 30, judges of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals stated that they needed additional time to consider the defense's arguments. The duration of the postponement is currently unknown.

The decision was made after the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week refused to consider a request for a stay, and the Tennessee Governor did not grant Pike's clemency petition.

Pike's lawyers stated that for many years in court, Tennessee authorities claimed she lied about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. However, during a recent review of the case concerning the method of execution, the state no longer disputed the fact that Pike had experienced sexual abuse and rape.

The defense asked the appellate court to return her petition to the district court. According to lawyers, if federal courts had previously made decisions based on the state's assertion that Pike was lying, this could have affected the consideration of her case at the federal level.

A separate appeal, which led to the current suspension of the sentence, concerns the method of execution by lethal injection. Lawyers argue that such a procedure could cause greater suffering than necessary for the execution of the sentence, which, in their opinion, contradicts the U.S. Constitution. They also stated that the state's procedures did not provide Pike with a fair opportunity to prove this in court.

The Tennessee Attorney General stated that the state would continue to seek the execution of the imposed sentence and would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the decision to suspend it. He noted that in death penalty cases, the defense often files objections at a late stage after years of legal proceedings.

The murder of Colleen Slemmer caused a great stir in Knoxville in 1995. The body of the 19-year-old girl was found with a pentagram carved on her chest. Pike denied carving the symbol herself. According to the testimonies of two other camp residents, she talked about the murder before and after its commission and showed them a fragment of Slemmer's skull.

Павялічыць

A year after the murder, Pike was sentenced to death. Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

Pike had a documented history of childhood sexual abuse, as well as neglect. Her lawyers argue that if she were tried today for the same crime committed as a teenager, she would not have received a death sentence.

In 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that Pike had not presented circumstances that could constitute grounds for mitigating the punishment. According to the Tennessee Department of Correction, at the time of her incarceration, Pike was the youngest person on death row.

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