Death Row Inmate Christa Pike's Execution Halted by Court Just One Hour Before She Was Set to Die by Lethal Injection

Christa Pike has received a last-minute stay of execution, RadarOnline.com has learned, and she will not be given a lethal injection on Wednesday, Sept. 30.

Pike was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, but that punishment is now on hold.

Pike's scheduled execution was halted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit about an hour before she was set to die.

Her lawyer had argued that the 50-year-old's case should be reopened to reconsider her allegations that she was sexually abused beginning when she was a child, which the state acknowledged at a special hearing in August.

According to the emergency order, which Radar has obtained, "Pike contends that the State’s concession of her history of child sexual abuse and rape 'erodes the foundation' of her state court proceedings.

"Pike also cites scholarly authority supporting her argument that the State’s representations about her history of sexual abuse tainted the state court proceedings and the subsequent federal ones by introducing damaging stereotypes of survivors of sexual assault."

It wasn't immediately clear if Tennessee's attorney general was appealing the decision or how long the execution might be delayed.

Pike claims she has post-traumatic stress disorder from abuse she suffered at the hands of men as a young girl, including when she was just two years old.

"Throughout her childhood, Christa was failed by people and institutions that should have shown her care and meaningful intervention. Instead, her childhood was marked by repeated, documented r-pe and sexual abuse, neglect, and violence," her attorney relayed.

She was set to be executed for the brutal 1995 murder of a classmate whom she accused of "trying to get with her boyfriend." She has spent the last 30 years on death row and is the only woman in Tennessee currently scheduled to die.

On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee denied clemency for Pike, saying in a statement, "After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike's request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene."

Later that night, the Supreme Court declined to intervene as well, which was thought to be her final appeal.

Earlier in the day, Pike's spiritual advisor shared a letter on her behalf expressing her "gratitude" to everyone who has supported her, writing: "I've felt more love in the last two weeks than I have my entire life."

She also wrote that she was ready to die.

"Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace," she wrote. "I am not afraid to die. I'm only nervous about the process."

As Radar reported, Pike was 18 when she and 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer participated in a federal job-training program for troubled adolescents in 1995. But according to court documents, the two were not friendly with each other.

"They had a strained relationship," the court documents said. "Pike claimed that Slemmer 'had been trying to get (her) boyfriend' and… 'running her mouth' everywhere."

According to the Tennessee Supreme Court, "On January 11, 1995, Pike, a student at the Job Corps Centre in Knoxville, told her friend Kim Iloilo, who was also a student at the facility, that she intended to kill another student, Colleen Slemmer, because she 'had just felt mean that day.'"

"The next day, Pike lured Slemmer out by convincing her they were making a trip to a local Blockbuster video store. Instead, however, she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat their classmate, slashed her throat, and engraved satanic symbols on her body."