The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for Tennessee to carry out its first execution of a woman in 200 years, overturning a lower-court order that had temporarily halted the lethal injection of Christa Pike for the murder of a fellow student nearly three decades ago.
Pike’s clemency request, which detailed a childhood marked by trauma and sexual abuse, was rejected by Governor Bill Lee on Monday. If executed, she would become the only person in Tennessee’s modern era of capital punishment to be put to death for a crime committed as a teenager.
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In an order signed by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court dissolved a temporary stay issued by a three-judge panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals just one hour before Pike’s scheduled execution.
Pike, now 50, was 18 in January 1995 when she, her 17-year-old boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp and a third accomplice lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at the Knoxville Job Corps vocational centre, into a wooded area. There, they tortured and killed her.
Prosecutors told the trial that Pike regarded Ms Slemmer as a rival for Shipp’s affection.
Pike and Shipp later confessed to the killing. Both were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996, but while Pike received a death sentence, Shipp was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Shadolla Peterson, the third defendant, was 18 at the time and served as a lookout. She testified for the prosecution and was sentenced to probation.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh signed the order lifting the temporary stay of execution
Pike is currently the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. The Tennessee Department of Correction says she was also convicted in August 2001 of attempted first-degree murder after attacking another inmate.
In a 226-page petition urging the governor to replace her death sentence with life without the possibility of parole, Pike’s attorneys described years of violence, neglect and sexual abuse during her childhood. They said she was raped twice, at ages 11 and 17.
Her lawyers also pointed to diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder that she received while in prison.
Teen who committed murder ‘no longer exists’
They further argued that Pike’s mother drank heavily during pregnancy, potentially impairing brain development and making it harder for Pike to control her impulses as a young person.
“The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists,” her lawyers wrote after Mr Lee rejected the clemency request.
“Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women.”
Ms Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has publicly supported carrying out the execution.
Executions of women in the United States remain exceptionally uncommon. Women account for only 18 of the 1,683 people executed since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Pike’s case has attracted international scrutiny. A group of United Nations human rights experts recently called for her sentence to be commuted.
Experts on sexual violence and trauma have also urged officials to spare her life, saying the lethal-injection process could trigger severe and traumatic flashbacks of childhood sexual abuse and rape, intensifying the cruelty and suffering of her execution.
