Supreme Court allows execution of Christa Pike to go forward

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that Tennessee can put Christa Pike to death, lifting an eleventh-hour appeals court ruling that had paused the execution.

The court’s decision clears the way for the state’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years. It came over the dissent of the three liberal justices.

Pike, 50, was set to be executed by lethal injection at 10 a.m. local time at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. She is the lone woman on the state’s death row.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stopped the execution just before the scheduled time. The Supreme Court lifted that order hours later at Tennessee’s request.

Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 for killing 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Jobs Corps Center worker from Knoxville, in an apparent jealous rage. Prosecutors say Slemmer was lured to an abandoned steam plant near the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus, where she was beaten, tortured and ultimately killed by Pike and Pike’s then-boyfriend.

Pike confessed to the murder, admitting that she had slashed Slemmer’s throat several times, threw asphalt at her head and kept a piece of her skull as a souvenir. A pentagram, which is sometimes seen as a Satanic symbol, was also carved into Slemmer’s chest.

Her lawyers also argued that Pike’s history of “extreme sexual abuse” endured as a child, including rape, was not fully presented to the jury during the sentencing phase and should also have been considered. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Pike described herself in a state clemency petition as a “mentally ill 18-year-old kid” when the murder took place, which also noted that the state had since acknowledged the abuse she suffered.

The appeals court halted the execution to allow more time to review those claims, which Justice Sonia Sotomayor referenced in her dissent.

“The Court’s decision to vacate that stay interferes with the Sixth Circuit’s routine administrative handling of a capital case and unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim,” she wrote. “Worse, the Court grants such extraordinary relief solely to allow the State to execute Pike before litigation over her conviction has properly run its course in the lower courts.”