The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for Tennessee to execute Christa Gail Pike after overturning a last-minute stay from a federal appeals court Wednesday.
Pike was scheduled to be executed Wednesday morning for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. The Supreme Court’s order vacated the appeals court’s stay, allowing the state to proceed with the execution.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the decision, with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joining her. Sotomayor wrote that the Sixth Circuit had issued the stay to give itself enough time to consider new issues raised in Pike’s case.
Sotomayor said Pike’s legal team had previously sought relief based in part on claims that her trial attorney failed to present evidence about severe sexual abuse Pike suffered as a minor.
She also said that Tennessee had acknowledged during a later hearing that it did not dispute Pike’s account of the abuse “except perhaps as a minor.”
Pike’s attorneys have argued that the jury that sentenced her to death did not hear evidence about her troubled childhood and abuse. They have said those circumstances should have been considered when deciding her sentence.
Sotomayor criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the execution to proceed while those issues remain pending in lower courts, writing that an execution cannot be reversed once carried out.
Pike was convicted in 1996 for the killing of Slemmer, who was also enrolled in the Job Corps. Prosecutors said Pike conspired with Tadaryl Shipp and Shadolla Peterson to kill Slemmer over relationship issues. During the attack, Slemmer was beaten and killed, and prosecutors said a pentagram was carved into her chest.
It remains unclear when Tennessee will carry out the execution following the Supreme Court’s decision.
Pike, 50, is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row and was set to become the first woman executed by the state in more than 200 years.