US Supreme Court clears way for execution of Christa Pike
The US Supreme Court lifted a stay of execution for convicted murderer Christa Pike in Tennessee, overriding dissent from three liberal justices. The execution order was set to expire at midnight unless carried out.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative member of the court, approved an application late Wednesday to vacate a stay that had paused the execution of Christa Pike, without explaining the reasoning behind the order. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's three liberal members, dissented.
Sotomayor argued the ruling allows Tennessee to put Pike to death before her ongoing legal challenges to her conviction can be fully reviewed, saying the state's interest in a faster execution cannot outweigh Pike's fundamental interest in her own life.
The decision came just before 18:00 local time, shortly before the state's execution order at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville was due to expire at midnight. Had the deadline passed, Tennessee's state Supreme Court would have needed to set a new execution date.
Earlier Wednesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had paused the execution, saying it needed more time to weigh arguments in the case. Pike's lawyers said Tennessee had long argued in court that she lied about having been sexually abused as a child, but at a recent hearing on execution methods, the state no longer disputed that she had suffered abuse and rape. Her legal team sought to have the matter sent back to a lower court for reconsideration.
This marked the second time in two days the Supreme Court allowed the execution to proceed, after rejecting a separate appeal from Pike on Tuesday. Tennessee's governor also denied her clemency request this week.
At the time of her imprisonment, 21-year-old Pike was the youngest person on the state's death row; she is now the only woman on Tennessee's death row. Since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, the US has executed 18 women compared with 1,663 men.
In her clemency petition, Pike said she had intended only to beat victim Colleen Slemmer, not kill her, but could not stop herself. The 1995 killing, in which an inverted pentagram was carved into the victim's chest, drew intense media attention in Knoxville at the time.
