Tennessee killer Christa Pike set to be executed as Supreme Court clears way for state to carry out sentence
Teenage killer Christa Pike has been cleared for execution after the United States Supreme Court overruled a last-minute stay.
Pike, 50, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 10am on Wednesday for the 1995 slaying of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in a fit of jealous rage.
But the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued an order early Wednesday morning staying Pike’s execution ‘until further order of this court.’
It came after a judge agreed to consider whether prosecutors took into account the childhood sexual abuse she suffered when she was first sentenced.
‘The court has stayed this, recognizing the serious concerns about Christa’s scheduled execution,’ Stephen Ferrell, of the Federal Defenders Services of Eastern Tennessee, said at the time.
After the sensational turn of events, the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office said it is asking the US Supreme Court to lift the pause on her execution, calling the decision a ‘technical issue,’ according to The Tennessean.
The order then overruling the stay then came in just before 6pm.
Supreme Court justices did not explain their reasoning for siding with state prosecutors in the brief two-sentence order, but the court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented.
Christa Pike, now 50, was just 18 when she killed a classmate in a jealous rage and became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row
She was convicted at the age of 18 in March 1996 for brutally stabbing and beating Knoxville Job Corps student Colleen Slemmer (pictured) to death
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
