Christa Pike tortured and murdered a classmate in 1995. She had been set to die on Wednesday, the first woman executed in the state in 200 years.
Page A2From§Eachthe noon edition — 30 September 2026
State's own medical staff already answered the ethics question judges are giving themselves more time to ask.
As it ran on the front
I had a renewal notice in my hand this morning — the kind that comes around every eight years or so, the sticker for the plates, the little card you tuck in the glovebox and forget until it's due again. I was killing time before the shop opened, doing the math on the back of it, and it got away from me. Thirty-one years, I came up with. Three of these cards since 1995. The fourth one isn't due till next year.
I don't know why that number stuck with me more than the rest of it — maybe because it's the same stretch as the cards in my glovebox, three full turns of it, and I never once had a court tell me to pull over and wait an hour.…
…(cont) Because that's what happened to her, more or less. Tennessee had her scheduled to die Wednesday — first woman executed there in over two hundred years, every paper ran that line — and the Sixth Circuit stepped in about an hour before it was set to happen. Two judges to one. They said they needed time "to properly analyze the parties' fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits" — that's their language, not mine, copied straight off the order. That's what's sitting unresolved. Is it true? I don't know. Has anybody had the time yet to find out?
Here's where I get turned around, and maybe you can set me straight, because I'm just a guy with a bad fan belt and too much time in the garage on a Wednesday. In May, Tennessee ran a lethal injection that NPR says was botched. After that, a batch of the state's own medical professionals — dozens of them, it says — told the governor's office that healthcare professionals shouldn't help carry out executions, no matter the method. Not this method. Not any method. That's what they told the governor's office, is what I read.
So I've got the people the state pays to keep people alive telling the governor's office the method flouts what they signed up for. And I've got a woman saying she was raped as a teenager, with a court that needs more time to decide if that matters. Does one of those three answer the other two? I don't see how. Maybe it's in the order somewhere and I missed it — I miss things.
I think about my garage a lot, doing this. There's a car out there right now needs a new fan belt I keep meaning to grab at the corner store, and every time I shut the hood I tell myself next week, next week — the way you do when the fix is cheap and the excuse is free. The medical professionals said don't count on us. The court said give us an hour, then took a little more than that.
Oh — hold on, wait. One more thing. That renewal notice I started with. Eight years, eight years, eight years since 1995 — three turns of it, if I've got the math right. The fourth one's not due till next year, same stretch of calendar the Sixth Circuit's giving itself to resolve the merits. Everybody at the shop keeps telling me it's four times by now. I count three. Is it three, or is it four? Go ahead and check my math. I've been wrong about smaller things.
“The state's own medical people said don't put my name on this, it's not clean, and Tennessee tried to run the switch anyway with an hour left on the clock. Two judges said wait, one said go, and that's what passes for a system checking itself. Thirty-one years this case has been open, and the only thing that hasn't changed is how close they keep cutting it before anybody official has to actually answer for it.”
“Look, an appeals court taking time to "properly analyze fully briefed arguments" is exactly the system working as designed, nobody's rushing anybody into — okay, it was an hour out, but that's not rushing, that's diligence, that's — did I say an hour? Let's just call it ample review time and move on.”
The receipts
A federal appeals court halted the planned execution of Christa Pike, 50, in Tennessee on Wednesday an hour before it was scheduled to take place. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit stayed the execution until further notice.
A federal appeals court halted the execution in Tennessee of Christa Pike about an hour before it was set to begin Wednesday.
Christa Pike’s lethal injection is booked for September 30. She may be the first woman Tennessee executes in 200 years.
Christa Pike's execution was halted by a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals stay in a 2-1 split decision, leaving Tennessee's death penalty case unresolved.
After a botched lethal injection in May, dozens of Tennessee medical professionals told the governor that healthcare professionals shouldn't help with executions, no matter the method.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday halted the execution of Christa Pike around an hour before it was scheduled to occur. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit issued a short stay of execution order to permit time “to properly analyze the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits.”...
· The Supreme Court of the United States refuses to vacate a stay of execution issued by the Arkansas Supreme Court. Arkansas's highest court has also put on hold the execution of another inmate, Bruce from the morgue, 18 Apr 2017
· Nebraska executes convicted murderer Carey Dean Moore, becoming the first U.S. state to execute an inmate with fentanyl, and what is also the state's first execution in 21 years, and its first by leth from the morgue, 14 Aug 2018
· Critics of Colleen Slemmer murder case argue Chirsta Pike doesn’t deserve the death penalty from the morgue, 12 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.