Execution of US murderer Christa Pike halted shortly before it was due to happen

What the report says

The execution of Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike was halted shortly before it was set to take place, according to Nile Post’s report drawing on BBC coverage. Pike, now 50, has been on death row since her 1996 conviction for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. The stay was issued by judges on the Sixth Circuit Appeals court, who said they needed more time to weigh the arguments in her case.

The pause came after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene and Tennessee Governor declined Pike’s clemency request earlier in the week. Pike’s lawyers have argued that the state’s handling of her challenge to Tennessee’s lethal injection method may have been affected by earlier claims that she had lied about childhood sexual abuse. They also say the execution protocol could cause unconstitutional suffering and that she was denied a fair chance to prove her claims.

Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend were accused of beating, torturing and killing Slemmer, who was 19, after meeting her at a job training camp for troubled teens. The case drew wide attention in Knoxville in 1995 and has remained notable in Tennessee death penalty debates, including because Pike would have been the first woman executed in the state in more than two centuries if the execution had gone ahead. The Tennessee attorney general said the state intends to keep defending the sentence while court challenges continue.