Christa Pike was hours away from becoming the first woman executed in Tennessee in at least 200 years when a federal appeals court stepped in and halted her execution. Pike, now 50, has spent three decades on death row for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. The case has drawn renewed attention because Pike was 18 when the killing happened and because her attorneys say her history of severe childhood sexual abuse and mental illness was not properly considered, as per reports by the Washington Post and The AP.
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