Christa Pike’s execution, the first involving a woman in 200 years in Tennessee, is in limbo after it was halted by a federal appeals court an hour before she was set to be put to death.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit approved a last-minute request for a stay of execution for Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, to give judges time to review whether her allegations of sexual abuse and rape as a child were fully considered before she was sentenced to death.
