US Supreme Court clears way for Tennessee execution of Christa Gail Pike

The US Supreme Court voted 6-3 to lift a stay blocking the execution of Christa Gail Pike. She will be the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years.

Supreme Court overturns stay, Pike execution to proceed Wednesday night

The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for Tennessee to carry out the execution of Christa Gail Pike, wvlt.tv reports. The ruling, issued just before 7 p.m., determined that the Sixth District Court of Appeals had overstepped its authority when it imposed a last-minute stay — granted less than an hour before Pike's scheduled 11 a.m. execution.

The court ruled 6-3. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, arguing the court had moved too quickly and had cleared the path to execution before lower courts could assess whether earlier proceedings had been compromised.

That question — whether past proceedings were tainted — was the central dispute between Pike's defence team and the state of Tennessee.

Pike's attorneys had argued that the abuse and repeated rapes she suffered prior to the killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer should have been weighed in the sentencing decision. Throughout earlier proceedings, they said, the state had contested Pike's account of her troubled childhood. In the appeal, however, her legal team contended that prosecutors had in fact acknowledged that difficult upbringing in open court. Because Pike's jury was never informed of the abuse, her attorneys argued, the integrity of the case had been affected.

Pike was convicted in 1996 for what became known as the "Jobs Corps Murder," named after the programme both Pike and Slemmer were enrolled in at the time of Slemmer's 1995 killing. Prosecutors argued that Pike conspired with two others — 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp and 18-year-old Shadolla Peterson — to murder Slemmer over a personal dispute. Evidence presented during the trial revealed that the perpetrators had carved a pentacle into Slemmer's chest and kept a fragment of her skull.

Legal challenges to Pike's death sentence have continued since her conviction nearly three decades ago. The Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed the execution will proceed on Wednesday night. When carried out, Pike will become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Source: Google News MT — Crime (en)