Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike was supposed to be executed this morning ... but her execution was paused just an hour before her scheduled lethal injection.
According to a court notice obtained by PEOPLE, Pike was granted a stay "until further order" by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
The court reportedly said it needed time to consider Pike's latest filing, where her attorneys claim the state had reversed its position that she'd fabricated her claims of sexual abuse.
According to the order, her lawyers argue that the state's reversal "erodes the foundation" of previous proceedings, as well as the integrity of the federal proceedings that followed ... since they're now recognizing her history of child sexual abuse and rape.
As you know, Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, where she bashed her in the head with a piece of asphalt, carved a pentagram into her chest, and kept a piece of her skull as a trophy.
To be clear, Pike's not trying to deny that she killed Colleen. Instead, her attorneys are arguing that she should instead serve a life-in-prison sentence because of her history of sexual abuse and mental illness.
According to court records obtained by USA Today, Pike was sexually assaulted by her grandmother's boyfriend from before she was in preschool until she was in kindergarten. She was raped by a neighbor when she was 11 and raped again by a stranger at 17.
The outlet says she also attempted suicide at 12, and has been diagnosed with both bipolar disorder and PTSD. Her lawyers say the jury that sentenced her to death never heard about her history of abuse.
The state's pushing back on her latest filing, however, saying she's trying to relitigate an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim.
Circuit Judge Jane Stranch wrote in the order ... "The interests of justice and the finality of Pike's impending execution compel the entry of a short stay of execution in order to properly analyze the parties' fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits."
Meanwhile, dissenting judge Richard Griffin, says Pike's trying to pull a "last-ditch meritless effort" to put off her execution.
It's not yet clear how long the court will take to decide whether Pike's filing will return to court and reopen her previous proceedings.
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