Supreme Court Allows Tennessee to Execute Convicted Murderer Christa Pike

The U.S. Supreme Court late on Sept. 30 lifted a lower court’s stay of execution for Christa Gail Pike, clearing the way for Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

In an unsigned order, the court majority did not provide reasons for vacating the stay.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit halted the lethal injection execution about an hour before it was scheduled to start on Sept. 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee.

The 10 a.m. execution was paused after the Sixth Circuit requested more time to determine whether Pike’s history of childhood sexual abuse was fully presented when a jury convicted her and sentenced her to death in 1996.

Not long after, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti asked the Supreme Court to lift the stay.

“It is common in capital cases for the defense to raise last-minute objections following decades of litigation in numerous courts,” Skrmetti told The Epoch Times after his office filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court.

“We are asking the Supreme Court of the United States to lift the stay.”

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, refused a clemency request on Sept. 28. Before that, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied a stay of execution on Sept. 23.

The Supreme Court had already refused Pike’s own request for a stay on Sept. 29, in an unsigned order. No justices dissented. The same day it also denied Pike’s petition for a full review of the case. The justices did not provide reasons for their decisions.

A Knox County jury convicted Pike of first-degree murder and conspiracy, and sentenced her to death in the killing of Colleen Slemmer, 19, her classmate at Knoxville Job Corps, a residential job training program for disadvantaged teenagers and young adults.

Pike, then 18, “beat, tortured, and killed Colleen Slemmer” because, in her own words, she “just felt mean” on Jan. 12, 1995, the date of the murder, Skrmetti said in a Sept. 28 brief.

Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was trying to take her boyfriend, a claim Slemmer’s friends denied.

Pike slashed Slemmer’s throat multiple times, stabbed her in the back, and crushed her skull, Skrmetti said.

Pike also mutilated the victim’s body by carving pentagrams, which police linked to satanic worship after a book was recovered from her boyfriend’s room.

In 2004, she received a separate concurrent 25-year sentence for the attempted murder of another inmate in 2001.

Jacki Thrapp contributed to this report.

This is a developing story and will be updated.