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A federal appeals court stopped Tennessee from executing convicted murderer Christa Gail Pike on Wednesday morning, issuing a last-minute stay roughly one hour before she was scheduled to receive a lethal injection.
The 2-1 order from the Sixth Circuit came after witnesses had already gathered at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Tennessee immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the stay and let the sentence proceed.
WKRN confirmed the court’s sudden intervention as the clock ran down:
Pike, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps.
According to court records, Pike and two accomplices lured Slemmer into a wooded area. Pike beat and stabbed the teenager, cut her throat, carved a pentagram into her chest and crushed her skull with a piece of asphalt.
Prosecutors said Pike later showed a piece of Slemmer’s skull to classmates.
The savagery of that crime — and the fact that Slemmer’s family has waited more than three decades for the sentence to be carried out — cannot be reduced to a footnote while the legal system focuses on Pike.
The New York Post reported the sudden halt Wednesday morning:
The Associated Press reports that the Sixth Circuit panel ordered the short stay so it could examine Pike’s argument that evidence of childhood sexual abuse and rape was not fully considered during sentencing. The majority acted after execution witnesses were already assembled, while the dissent called the filing a meritless last-ditch attempt to delay a lawful punishment.
The report says Pike does not deny killing Slemmer. Her attorneys instead contend that her age, mental illness and abuse history should have carried greater weight.
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, traveled from Florida to witness the execution and has said she has waited decades to see the sentence enforced.
The timing is even more extraordinary because the U.S. Supreme Court had rejected Pike’s earlier request less than a day before the Sixth Circuit intervened.
The Supreme Court’s September 29 order denied both Pike’s application for a stay and her petition for review. The one-page order says the stay request was presented to Justice Brett Kavanaugh and then referred to the full Court.
The justices denied the application and the certiorari petition without a noted dissent. That appeared to clear the final federal obstacle to the 10 a.m. Central execution.
The Sixth Circuit’s separate order the next morning created a new emergency track. Tennessee’s immediate appeal then sent the case back to the same Supreme Court that had rejected Pike’s earlier request only hours before.
CNN emphasized that Tennessee was on the verge of carrying out its first execution of a woman in nearly two centuries:
In the state’s Supreme Court filing, Tennessee argued that Pike’s conviction rested on overwhelming evidence, including her confession, and that she had already received three decades of direct appeals, state post-conviction review and federal habeas proceedings. The state also noted that Pike was convicted of attempted first-degree murder in 2004 after choking a fellow inmate unconscious with a shoelace.
The Sixth Circuit stay is temporary, not a reversal of Pike’s conviction or death sentence. Its immediate effect was simply to stop the execution while the panel examines the legal arguments now before it.
Tennessee’s emergency appeal means the Supreme Court could still intervene. Until the justices act or the Sixth Circuit resolves the case, Pike remains alive on death row — and Colleen Slemmer’s family remains trapped in a legal battle that has already lasted more than 30 years.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at 100 Percent Fed Up. View the original article here.
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[ H/T WLT Report ]
