US Supreme Court allows execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee — BBC News
The US Supreme Court has lifted a temporary stay of execution for 50-year-old Christa Pike in Tennessee. The decision clears the way for the death sentence to be carried out by lethal injection. Pike could become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, BBC News reports.
Lifting the stay
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals halted the execution on Wednesday morning, about an hour before it was scheduled to take place. The judges said they needed additional time to consider the arguments in Pike's case.
Tennessee's attorney general asked the Supreme Court to overturn that decision. Justice Brett Kavanaugh granted the request to lift the stay of execution on Wednesday evening, providing no explanation in the order. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the decision.
Sotomayor said the order permits Pike's execution before her outstanding legal challenges receive proper consideration. She noted that the state's desire to expedite the execution by several days or weeks cannot outweigh the condemned woman's fundamental interest in her own life.
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Defense arguments
Christa Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. When Pike was 18, she and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed 19-year-old Slemmer, whom they had met at a training camp for troubled teenagers.
Pike's lawyers argued that the state had claimed in court for years that she had falsely spoken about sexual abuse in childhood. At a recent hearing concerning the method of execution, however, the state, according to the defense, did not dispute that she had experienced sexual abuse and rape. The defense asked for the motion to be sent back to the district court, believing that the state's previous position could have affected the federal review of the case.
The Supreme Court's decision came shortly before 6:00 p.m. local time. The current execution warrant was set to expire at midnight; if the execution is not carried out by then, a new date must be set by the Tennessee Supreme Court. Earlier this week, the state's governor also denied Pike's clemency request.
