The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the execution of Tennessee inmate Christa Pike to move forward after it was halted hours earlier by a federal appeals court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit stayed Pike’s execution in the eleventh hour, as judges said they want to review whether her allegations of sexual abuse and rape as a child were fully considered before she was sentenced to death. The high court had previously declined to intervene.
With the Supreme Court permitting the execution to proceed, Pike, 50, will be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in over 200 years. Pike will receive the death penalty at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. She was scheduled for death by lethal injection on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. before the appeals court stepped in.
Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, arguing that allowing the case to move forward prevents the lower court from considering Pike’s allegations from her childhood.
Pike was convicted of murdering her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, 19, in 1995 when she was 18 years old in an envious rage. In 1996, she was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy. She has been in prison for more than 30 years.
TENNESSEE PREPARES TO EXECUTE THE FIRST WOMAN IN OVER 200 YEARS
Prosecutors presented evidence that Pike and her boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp, tortured Slemmer, slashed her with a box cutter and meat cleaver, carved a satanic pentagram symbol into her chest, smashed her head with a rock, and took a fragment of her skull as a souvenir. Pike committed the murder over an intense romantic jealousy of Slemmer, who allegedly attempted to steal her boyfriend’s attention. Shipp was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder.
Pike had requested clemency from Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN), but the governor rejected the application. A day later, the Supreme Court denied her emergency application for a stay.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
