Tennessee's execution of Christa Pike for a murder she committed at 18 years old was halted Wednesday about an hour before it was set to begin, as a federal appeals court sought to review whether her allegations of childhood sexual abuse and rape were fully considered at her sentencing. The Tennessee attorney general's office immediately asked the US Supreme Court to vacate the stay order. This would have been the state’s first execution of a woman in at least 200 years.
Read moreUS judge bars prosecutors from seeking death penalty against Luigi Mangione Pike, now 50, and her boyfriend were convicted of stabbing and beating 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville, in 1995. The case garnered widespread attention at the time– in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. Execution witnesses had already gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the order came down at around 9am CDT.
As the execution date drew near, it renewed debate over the death penalty for young offenders. Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue the state should consider Pike’s age at the time, mental illness and a history of severe sexual abuse that included being raped from the time she was a toddler. Her lawyers also pointed to evidence that Pike's mother drank heavily during pregnancy, contributing to faulty brain development that made it difficult for their client to control her impulses as a young person.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds sentenced to death in Tennessee have had their sentences vacated. 'I feel forgiveness': Daniel Gwynn on life after 30 years on death row To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site.
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request from Pike's attorneys to halt the execution. Governor of Tennessee Bill Lee on Monday denied Pike clemency. It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition.
I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.” Slemmer’s mother wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out. Martinez said a group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the execution.
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