US Supreme Court clears way for Christa Pike’s execution in Tennessee

The United States Supreme Court has cleared the way for the state of Tennessee to execute Christa Pike, overturning a last-minute stay that had stalled the state’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.

Pike, 50, was initially scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday morning for a killing she committed at age 18, and witnesses had already gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay.

The court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority did not explain their new order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent saying Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.

A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Correction said it would proceed with Pike’s execution on Wednesday night ahead of a midnight cut-off on the state’s execution order.

Pike and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

After the stay was issued, Tennessee’s attorney general immediately appealed to the US Supreme Court. Witnesses and media remained at the prison while the high court considered the case.

The attorney general’s office said in its appeal that halting the execution at the last moment traumatised Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s lawyers.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissent that the decision to vacate the stay interfered with the 6th Circuit Court’s handling of the case and “unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim”.

Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse that included being raped from the time she was a toddler.

“It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, the criminal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider those facts in weighing the defendant’s moral culpability,” her lawyers wrote in a filing.

After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she could not “put the brakes on”.

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement.

Slemmer’s mother wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out. “Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press news agency in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to Robin M Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Older records can be spotty, though, so it is difficult to know precise details about the last woman who was put to death in the state.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1 percent of all executions, according to the centre.