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

What the report says

The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for Tennessee to carry out the execution of Christa Pike, overturning a late stay that had paused the state’s first planned execution of a woman in at least 200 years, according to Al Jazeera. Pike, now 50, had been set to die by lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday after witnesses had already arrived, before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary delay.

Al Jazeera reported that the stay was linked to questions about whether Pike’s claims of childhood sexual abuse were adequately considered at sentencing. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority did not explain its order, while the court’s three liberal justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the ruling interrupted the appeals court’s review and blocked fuller consideration of Pike’s claims, according to the report.

Pike was convicted in 1995 of the killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at a Knoxville job training facility, along with her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp. Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received life in prison with the possibility of parole, while Pike was sentenced to death. Her lawyers argue her age, mental health, and abuse history should have weighed more heavily, while Slemmer’s mother has said she wants the sentence carried out.

The case is notable because women are rarely executed in the US, and Tennessee has not put a woman to death for roughly two centuries, though historical records are incomplete, the report said.