A federal appeals court has stopped the execution of Christa Pike, the only woman held on Tennessee's death row, according to reporting by the New York Times and ABC News Australia. The halt was issued about an hour before Pike was due to be put to death on Wednesday.
Pike was sentenced for the torture and killing of a classmate in 1995, the New York Times reported.
The New York Times described the scheduled lethal injection as the first execution of a woman in Tennessee in 200 years. ABC News Australia likewise reported that no woman had been subjected to the death penalty in more than two centuries.
