I don’t know why this bothers me. But it does.

Christa Gail Pike was supposed to die Wednesday morning.

The execution witnesses were assembled at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The Supreme Court had rejected an appeal the night before. Everything appeared to be over.

Then, about an hour before the scheduled execution, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in and stopped it.

And I found myself relieved.

That’s difficult for me to explain.

Pike was convicted in the horrific killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. I don’t want to sanitize what happened to that young woman. The crime was brutal beyond description. Pike was 18 at the time, and by the account I discussed on the show, she was the ringleader.

I’m also not somebody who automatically opposes the death penalty.

There are crimes where I look at what somebody has done and think: You got what you deserved. May God have mercy on your soul.

But I’ve noticed something about myself over the years.

When the person scheduled to be executed is a woman, I get squeamish.

There. I said it.

I don’t know why.

Maybe somebody will tell me that’s sexist. Maybe in this wonderful age of equality I’m supposed to be every bit as comfortable watching the state execute a woman as a man.

I’m not.

That doesn’t mean I believe women are incapable of monstrous crimes. Obviously they are. It doesn’t mean Pike’s victim somehow matters less. Colleen Slemmer was 19 years old, and what was done to her was horrifying.

But something about this case kept bothering me beyond that.

Pike wasn’t alone.

Other people participated in the murder. One was 17 at the time and, according to what I discussed on the show, became eligible for parole. Another received a lengthy sentence. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Yes, she was the ringleader. Yes, age mattered in how the others were handled. There were differences among the defendants.

Still, I kept coming back to the same uncomfortable thought.

They all participated, but we’re going to take one person’s life while another may someday walk out of prison?

I used the word “unfair” on the air and immediately hated using it.

But that’s what was bothering me.

I don’t have a neat answer for you.

That’s increasingly rare in our business, isn’t it?

Turn on television and everybody has an answer before the question is finished. Nobody wrestles with anything anymore. Pick your team, receive your approved position and start yelling.

Sometimes I don’t know.

Sometimes something just rubs me the wrong way.

And Wednesday morning, this did.

Fortunately, before I could spend the entire show contemplating life, death and the American justice system, music came along to rescue me.

Frankie Lymon had a birthday. We talked about “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.” Marc Bolan of T. Rex came up.

And then we arrived at Gibby Haynes.

Lead singer of the Butthole Surfers.

Now, I did not name this band.

I want that entered into the record.

I asked around the studio whether anybody knew their music. Apparently I had assembled the only group of people in America completely unprepared for an emergency discussion of the Butthole Surfers.

Nobody was helping me.

They had a hit called “Pepper,” so I continued doing my professional duty and reporting the important musical history of the day.

Then Nursery Nurse texted me.

She didn’t like the name.

The band’s name, mind you.

Not my name.

I didn’t name them!

What am I supposed to do? Rewrite musical history because Nursery Nurse finds the Butthole Surfers indelicate?

I report. You figure it out.

I even explained that I didn’t know why they chose the name or what exactly they intended it to mean. I wanted absolutely no part of that investigation.

And maybe that’s a strange place to end a column that began with an execution.

But that’s the show.

One minute I’m trying to understand why the death penalty suddenly feels different to me because the condemned prisoner is a woman. The next minute I’m defending myself against accusations surrounding the naming practices of an alternative rock band.

I can explain the second one.

I didn’t name them.

The first one is harder.

Christa Pike committed a terrible crime. Colleen Slemmer deserved justice. None of my discomfort changes either fact.

But I also don’t think we’re required to shut off whatever part of us hesitates when the government prepares to take a human life.

I felt that hesitation Wednesday.

I still do.

And unlike the Butthole Surfers, I can’t explain the name of that feeling.

— Bo