- Tennessee was scheduled to execute 50-year-old Christa Gail Pike by lethal injection on Wednesday at 10 a.m. before the execution was halted last-minute by a federal appeals court.
- Judges said they want to review whether her allegations of sexual abuse and rape as a child were fully considered before she was sentenced to death.
- Pike was 18 years old in 1995 when she murdered her 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, a crime involving a severe assault and a pentagram carved into the victim's chest.
- Before her execution was halted, Pike declined to select a last meal, an usual move as death row inmates are allowed to request a customized final meal on the day of their execution.
- Female executions are extremely rare in the United States, accounting for just 18 of the 1,683 executions carried out nationwide since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
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