Death row inmate Christa Pike's execution will go ahead says Supreme Court judge
The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for the execution of Christa Pike after overturning a last-minute reprieve.
The killing had been scheduled for 10am on Wednesday (30 September) but judges from the Sixth Circuit Appeals court announced it had been halted.
The ruling said the execution was paused ‘until further order of this court’.
The court said: “The interests of justice and the finality of Pike’s impending execution compel the entry of a short stay of execution in order to properly analyse the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merits.
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Pike's lawyers said the order was made due to 'serious concerns'.
“The court has stayed this recognising the serious concerns about Christa’s scheduled execution,” her attorney said in a statement.
However, now the US Supreme Court has lifted the stay of Pike's execution.
It was not immediately clear when the execution would take place.
Pike, who has spent 30 years on death row, is set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee in 200 years.
Earlier today, her execution was paused after which Tennessee’s attorney general put in a request to the Supreme Court to overrule the last-minute stay.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh granted the application to vacate the stay of execution.
The order did not share any further details on why the stay was lifted.
Pike, 50, was given the death penalty for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1995.
Pike was just 18 when, on 12 January 1995, she, her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and her friend Shadolla Peterson lured Colleen Slemmer to a secluded woodland in Knoxville.
According to court documents, Pike and Shipp then brutally attacked Slemmer, while Peterson kept watch.
The beating lasted around 30 minutes, and saw them carve a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest, before Pike then killed the 19-year-old by delivering a fatal blow to the head, court documents claimed.
She was sentenced to death when she was just 20 years old and has spent the last three decades awaiting her execution.
In a letter shared just ahead of her planned execution yesterday, Pike said she was ‘at peace’ with her fate.
"Whether my clemency is granted or not, I am at peace," she wrote.
"I'm not afraid to die."
The Tennessee Department of Corrections confirmed yesterday that Pike had declined her final.
During her time on death row, Pike’s lawyers have argued that she should've been given life in prison, arguing that her childhood issues, age and mental health problems were all mitigating factors in the case.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said she was abused as a child and was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder.
In her clemency petition, Pike wrote: “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”
Claire Reid