A court order has thrown the schedule of Christa Pike's execution day into disarray.
The federal appeals court ruling puts in place a "short stay of execution" so three judges, who are Clinton, W. Bush and Obama appointees, can "properly analyze the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits."
A stay temporarily stops the execution from happening until the court issues a further decision. It is like a pause button.
So how long is a "short stay"? A representative of Pike's attorneys, Abby Trotter, said they don't know how long it will be until a decision is made.
For what it's worth: The judges are tasked with deciding the issue — whether to let Pike
reopen a court proceeding in the Eastern District of Tennessee — based on filings that have come in over the past 12 hours.
The first filings hit the docket of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit at 7:21 p.m. Sept. 29. Since then, 171 pages of documents have been filed.
Pike was scheduled to be killed by lethal injection at 10 a.m. Sept. 30 at Riverbend Maxiumum Security Institution in Nashville.
Pike, the only woman on Tennessee's death row, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.
The basis of her attorneys' argument to let her reopen proceedings is the state's recent admission that Pike was sexually abused as a child, according to court filings.
"On August 13, 2026, the State of Tennessee, for the first time, conceded that Ms. Pike had been the victim of child sexual abuse and rape," her attorneys wrote.
Pike's lawyers had brought this up to the federal judge in Eastern Tennessee, but that judge did not let her reopen the habeas proceedings.
On Sept. 29, her lawyers appealed that decision. Then at 8:17 a.m. CT, the 6th Circuit panel said it needed to pause the execution to give them time to review the arguments.
Another judge, Richard Allen Griffin, a President George W. Bush appointee, voted to deny Pike's petition.
"The present matter is another last-ditch meritless effort to delay a lawful execution," Griffin wrote.
Pike was 18 at the time of the killing, the youngest age at which someone can be sentenced to death. If her execution goes through, she will be the first person put to death in Tennessee for a crime committed at 18 since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.
Pike could be the second person executed by the state this year, after Anthony Darrell Hines on Aug. 13. Tony Carruthers was scheduled to die by lethal injection May 21, but the execution was called off last-minute when medical professionals were unable to find a suitable vein for the IV.
Gary Wayne Sutton is scheduled for execution Dec. 3.
Kirsten Fiscus contributed.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: What is a stay of execution and what does it mean for Christa Pike?
