Washington (United States) (AFP) – A Tennessee woman was expected to be put to death Wednesday for the murder of a high-school friend in what would be the first execution of a woman in that state in two centuries. A decision by the US Supreme Court late Wednesday cleared the way for Christa Pike — the only woman on the state’s death row — to be given a lethal injection after hours of dramatic legal wrangling up and down the judicial system.
A lawyer for Pike, Luke Ihnen, told AFP that there are no plans to file for further reprieve and that the execution “should start any minute if it hasn’t already.” “We do not plan to file anything else,” Ihnen said. When Pike is given a lethal injection, she will become the first woman executed in the US since 2023.
Pike had been scheduled for execution at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, but it was halted barely an hour before by a lower court. That court was set to review whether allegations that Pike was sexually abused as a child were fully considered in her original prosecution. “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 analyze the parties’ fully briefed arguments,” the lower court order said. But the Supreme Court later said it could go ahead. “The September 30, 2026 order of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit…granting a stay of execution is vacated,” the Supreme Court order said.
Liberal Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissented. “The Court’s decision…unnecessarily prevents that [lower] court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim,” the dissenting justices 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.”
– Mental health considerations – The case has sparked debate over capital punishment for young criminals. Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend beat and killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, at a job training camp for young people. The killing gained national attention after Slemmer’s body was found with a pentagram, often seen as a satanic symbol, carved in her chest. Pike’s lawyers argued she should be granted clemency due to her young age and mental health issues at the time of the killing. “She was 18 when she committed her crime, and she was deeply mentally ill,” they wrote in a clemency petition to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who said he would not intervene.
The US Supreme Court had rejected Tuesday an application for a stay of execution, which argued that Pike’s history as a victim of sexual assault, post-traumatic stress disorder and a blood condition meant a lethal injection would cause “needless suffering.” Independent UN rights experts have urged the US government and Tennessee authorities to “immediately halt” the execution and commute her death sentence. “Pike’s execution would mark the culmination of a trajectory of severe physical and psychological suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row,” they said.
In the United States, only 18 women have been executed since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
© 2024 AFP
