US Supreme Court allows execution of Christa Pike to go ahead

What the report says

The US Supreme Court has allowed Tennessee to move ahead with the execution of Christa Pike, reversing a last-minute pause ordered by a federal appeals court. According to BBC World News, the execution by lethal injection had been set for Wednesday morning before judges on the Sixth Circuit halted it, prompting Tennessee’s attorney general to ask the Supreme Court to lift the stay.

Pike, now 50, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the killing of Colleen Slemmer, whom she and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp killed when Pike was 18. If carried out, the execution would make Pike the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. The BBC said it was not immediately clear when the execution would take place after the Supreme Court’s order.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh granted the request to vacate the lower court’s stay, and the court gave no explanation in the order. The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor arguing that Pike’s legal challenges should be fully considered before the state proceeds. The report said Pike’s lawyers had also raised concerns about how the courts treated claims involving her alleged childhood abuse, while Tennessee had recently said it did not dispute that she suffered sexual abuse and rape.

The case comes amid broader debate in the US over capital punishment, and follows separate steps this week in which the Supreme Court declined one earlier appeal and Tennessee’s governor denied clemency.