- Christa Pike, a 50-year-old death row inmate, survived a botched execution attempt in Tennessee on 30 September after prison officials administered pentobarbital twice without lethal effect.
- Pike was originally sentenced to death for the January 1995 murder of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville, a crime committed when Pike was 18 alongside her then-boyfriend. Prosecutors stated that Pike feared Slemmer was a love rival and lured her to a secluded area, where the pair tortured and killed her.
- The case attracted widespread attention and rocked the city of Knoxville because to the brutal nature of the slaying, the ages of those involved and the fact that a Satanic pentagram was carved into the victim’s body.
- Prosecutors said Pike slashed Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. The pentagram detail stoked fears of Satan worship during the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. Shipp has admitted that he was the one who carved the symbol.
- Appeals for clemency highlight Pike's history of severe childhood sexual abuse, neglect, and untreated mental illness, with attorneys arguing her capital sentence is an outlier compared to contemporary standards for young offenders.
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