The scheduled execution of Tennessee death-row inmate Christa Pike was halted little more than an hour before it was due to take place after a federal appeals court said it needed additional time to consider arguments in her case.
Pike, 50, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued the stay on Wednesday, but it was not immediately clear how long the pause would remain in effect.
The ruling followed unsuccessful efforts by Pike to obtain relief from other authorities. The US Supreme Court had declined to hear one of her appeals, while Tennessee’s governor rejected her request for clemency earlier in the week.
Arguments over court review and execution method
Pike’s lawyers have argued that Tennessee previously maintained in court that she had falsely claimed to have been sexually abused as a child. At a more recent hearing concerning the state’s execution method, however, the state said it did not dispute that she had experienced sexual abuse and rape.
Her legal team asked the appeals court to return a motion to the district court, arguing that earlier federal court consideration may have been affected if it relied on the state’s former position about her childhood abuse claims.
The appeal resulting in Wednesday’s stay was separate from the case the Supreme Court declined to hear. That challenge concerned Tennessee’s lethal-injection procedure, which Pike’s lawyers said could inflict suffering beyond what was necessary to carry out a death sentence. They also argued that state procedures had not given Pike a fair opportunity to establish that claim.
Tennessee’s attorney general said the state would continue to pursue the sentence while courts addressed what the office described as a technical issue. The attorney general also said the state was asking the US Supreme Court to lift the stay.
1995 murder case
Pike was 18 when Colleen Slemmer, 19, was killed in 1995. Prosecutors said Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and murdered Slemmer after meeting her at a job-training camp for troubled teenagers. Pike denied carving a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest.
Two residents of the camp later testified that Pike had spoken about the murder before and afterward and had shown them a piece of Slemmer’s skull. Shipp, who was 17 at the time of the killing, received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Pike’s lawyers have cited her documented history of childhood sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect, and contend that she would not receive a death sentence if she were convicted as a teenager today. Tennessee’s Supreme Court ruled last year that she had not established grounds for commuting her sentence. If the execution proceeds, Pike would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Source: BBC News
