Tennessee halted Christa Pike’s execution hours before lethal injection as a federal appeals court reviews claims that childhood abuse and trauma were inadequately considered during sentencing at trial.
WEBDESK – MEDIABITES – AP
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee’s planned execution of Christa Gail Pike was halted Wednesday shortly before she was scheduled to receive a lethal injection for the 1995 murder of a 19-year-old classmate.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay in a 2-1 decision, giving the court time to consider whether Pike’s history of childhood sexual abuse and rape was adequately addressed during the proceedings that resulted in her death sentence.
Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, were convicted in the killing of Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Job Corps training facility in Knoxville.
The execution had been scheduled at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Had it proceeded, Pike would have become the first woman executed by Tennessee in at least two centuries.
Tennessee immediately appeals stay
The stay came after witnesses and media representatives had gathered at the prison for the scheduled execution.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court’s decision and allow the execution to proceed. The state argued that Pike’s latest legal challenge should not delay a sentence that had been litigated for decades.
The Supreme Court had rejected an earlier request from Pike’s lawyers for a stay on Tuesday, leaving the execution scheduled for Wednesday morning.
The latest appeal centers on whether Pike’s claims regarding her traumatic childhood can be considered at this stage of the case.
Her attorneys argue that jurors who sentenced her to death did not receive a full account of the abuse and trauma she experienced growing up. They say those circumstances, along with her age and later-diagnosed mental health conditions, should have been considered when determining her punishment.
Pike was 18 when Slemmer was killed
Pike and Shipp were convicted of killing Slemmer in January 1995. Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was interested in Shipp and lured her to a secluded area.
Slemmer was stabbed and beaten during the attack. A pentagram was also carved into her body, an element that contributed to intense public attention surrounding the case during the era of widespread “satanic panic” in the United States.
Pike received a death sentence, while Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Pike has not denied responsibility for Slemmer’s death. In her clemency petition, she expressed remorse and said she had initially intended to fight Slemmer but lost control during the attack.
Her lawyers have also pointed to a documented history of severe childhood abuse and later diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Victim’s family wants sentence carried out
Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has publicly supported Pike’s execution and said she has spent decades waiting for the sentence to be carried out.
Martinez told The Associated Press that she continues to think about her daughter every day and that the loss has remained especially painful around holidays and significant dates.
The competing arguments have placed Pike’s age at the time of the crime, her background and the legal finality of her death sentence at the center of the latest court proceedings.
Rare execution of a woman
Pike’s case also highlights how uncommon executions of women are in the United States.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 18 women have been executed in the U.S. since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, representing roughly 1% of all executions during that period.
Before Pike’s scheduled execution, Tennessee had carried out 17 executions in the modern era, all involving men. If executed, Pike would also have been the only person put to death by Tennessee under its modern death-penalty system for a crime committed at age 18.
The immediate future of Pike’s case now depends on further court action. Tennessee has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the stay, while the federal appeals court reviews the legal questions raised by her attorneys.
