The death sentence of Christa Pike was stayed indefinitely on September 30, stopping the execution just one hour before it was to be carried out. The ruling halted proceedings after the US Supreme Court denied a final bid to stop the death penalty on September 29 and Governor Bill Lee rejected a request for clemency.

Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820. Now 50, the lone woman on the state's death row was convicted of murdering a classmate in 1995 when she was 18. In statements provided before the stay, Pike claimed that childhood trauma and mental illness drove her actions and that she was "at peace" with the prospect of death.