The Supreme Court on Wednesday evening approved the execution of Christa Pike, paving the way for her to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. The decision, made just before 6 pm local time, was signed by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. No explanation was provided in the order.
Pike, 50, was to have been executed by lethal injection on Wednesday morning, but the execution was briefly halted by an appellate court. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had ruled earlier that day, 2-1, that a stay was necessary to assess whether her claims of childhood abuse had been fully considered during sentencing. The state attorney general immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the delay rewarded Pike's lawyers' tactics of delay.
The three liberal justices dissented. Sotomayor wrote that the decision opens the way for Tennessee to execute Pike before her legal challenges to the verdict can be properly considered. She added that the state's desire to accelerate the execution by a few days or even weeks cannot override her 'fundamental interest in life'.
Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. She was 18 when, along with her then boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, she beat, tortured and killed the 19-year-old, whom they had met at a camp for troubled youth. According to prosecutors, Pike was worried that Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend. The two lured Slemmer to a wooded area behind the Tennessee State University campus on 12 January 1995. Pike sliced Slemmer's throat and stomach with a box cutter, then smashed her head with a stone. Shipp was convicted of first-degree murder in 1997 and given a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Pike never disputed her involvement in the murder, but was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In a statement submitted with her petition for clemency, she said: 'I was a mentally ill 18-year-old child. It took me many years to even understand the gravity of what I had done. Even more, to accept how many lives I had affected. I took a life, a child's, a sister's, a friend's. The thought that I was capable of committing such a crime haunts me now.'
The victim's mother, May Martinez, said on Saturday that she was waiting for Pike's execution. 'Every time I think about it, I think of Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run away,' Martinez told the Associated Press. She added: 'I don't go a day, not a minute, without thinking of Colleen. The holidays are the worst.'
This was the second time in two days that the Supreme Court had given the green light to a death row inmate's execution by lethal injection. On Tuesday, the court rejected Pike's second appeal. The governor of Tennessee also rejected the request for clemacy this week. The execution order expires at midnight, and if time runs out, the Tennessee Supreme Court will have to set a new date for the execution, the Associated Press reported. The state's corrections department confirmed that the execution would take place on Wednesday evening.
