Why an appeals court stayed Christa Pike’s Tennessee execution

Tennessee has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the new stay. No ruling on that request is confirmed.

Why the appeals court granted a stay

Judges Jane Branstetter Stranch and Karen Nelson Moore voted to pause the execution so the Sixth Circuit could consider the parties’ arguments. Judge Richard Griffin dissented. The majority did not decide that Pike is entitled to reopen her case or that her death sentence is invalid.

The immediate dispute is procedural: Pike says she is asking a court to revisit a problem with the judgment in her earlier federal habeas case. Tennessee says her filing is instead a second habeas petition barred under the rules governing successive claims. How the court classifies the filing determines whether it can consider her request.

The Sixth Circuit denied Pike’s earlier federal habeas petition in 2019. Her current request seeks relief from the judgment in that case, after what she describes as a change in Tennessee’s position on her history of childhood sexual abuse and rape.

As Courthouse News Service reported, Pike argues that the state’s position undermines the earlier handling of her claim that her lawyers failed to investigate and present evidence that might have weighed against a death sentence. The available reporting does not establish the full scope of Tennessee’s changed position. The appeals court’s stay makes no new finding about the abuse claims.

That limit matters. The judges did not decide whether Pike’s lawyers performed inadequately, whether the earlier proceedings were unfair or what weight her abuse history should receive. They stopped the scheduled execution to examine whether her present request can be heard.

What Tennessee and the dissenting judge say

Tennessee argues that Pike is trying to return to a sentencing-lawyer claim that courts have already rejected. In the state’s view, calling the filing a request for relief from an earlier judgment does not change what it is: an impermissible attempt to bring another habeas claim.

Griffin agreed. In his dissent, he called Pike’s filing a “last-ditch meritless effort to delay a lawful execution,” Courthouse News Service reported. He would not have delayed the execution to consider it.

That disagreement comes before any fresh examination of the underlying sentencing claim. If Pike’s filing is barred as a successive petition, the courts need not revisit her argument about what her lawyers failed to present. If it can proceed, she still must establish that she is entitled to relief; the stay does not grant it.

Pike’s age gives the case a broader stake beyond that procedural question. She was 18 at the time of Slemmer’s murder, and her lawyers have pointed to her youth and abuse history in seeking an alternative to execution. The Sixth Circuit did not rule on whether her age makes her sentence disproportionate. Its decision leaves open whether the courts can examine her challenge to the earlier proceedings.

Slemmer’s family also faces the consequences of another delay. Her mother, May Martinez, supports carrying out Pike’s sentence and has said her daughter’s age should matter in decisions about Pike’s fate. “Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst,” Martinez said, according to The Associated Press.

The Supreme Court request is a separate decision

Tennessee’s application to the Supreme Court asks the justices to vacate the Sixth Circuit’s stay. It argues that Pike’s latest filing is a successive habeas petition presented as something else. The application puts the appeals court’s pause, rather than Pike’s guilt, before the justices.

The Supreme Court denied a separate stay request from Pike Tuesday, Sept. 29. That decision came before the Sixth Circuit issued its stay Wednesday; it does not decide Tennessee’s later request to lift the new stay.

The Sixth Circuit has not resolved whether Pike’s motion may proceed, and no new execution date is established. The next consequential decision is whether the Supreme Court will leave the appeals court’s stay in place or grant Tennessee’s request to lift it.