Federal appeals court halts Christa Pike execution an hour before it was due
The Sixth Circuit issued a last-minute stay of Christa Pike's execution in Tennessee while judges review her attorneys' arguments about childhood abuse, with witnesses already gathered at the prison.
A federal appeals court has halted the execution of Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, about an hour before she was due to die.
The Sixth Circuit stayed the execution on Wednesday morning “until further order of this court”. Pike, 50, was due to die by lethal injection at 10am local time at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashvilleand witnesses had already gathered when the order arrived at about 9am, CNN reported.
The ruling was 2-1, with Judges Karen Moore and Jane Stranch granting the stay and Judge Richard Griffin dissenting. 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 analyze the parties’ fully briefed arguments and resolve the issues on the merit”.
The order stems from arguments by Pike’s attorneys that traumatic abuse she suffered as a child was not fully considered before her sentencing.
Pike was 18 when she killed her 19-year-old fellow student Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville in January 1995. She was convicted of murder and conspiracy and sentenced to death in 1996. Had the execution gone ahead, she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in at least 200 years.
The US Supreme Court declined to intervene on Tuesday, and Governor Bill Lee refused to stop the execution on Monday. It is unclear how long the stay will last or whether the state will appeal to the Supreme Court to lift it.
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