The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a last-minute stay and allowed Tennessee to proceed with executing Christa Pike.
Pike, 50, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 10 a.m. CDT Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The Court of Appeals had halted the execution just over an hour before that deadline, ordering what it called a “short stay of execution” to last “until further order of this court.” Witnesses to the execution had already gathered at the prison when the stay came down.
The appeals court acted on Pike’s claims that sexual abuse and rape she says she suffered as a child were not properly considered when she was sentenced decades ago. The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office had asked the Supreme Court to lift the stay, arguing in its appeal that the last-minute halt traumatized the victim’s family and rewarded what it called “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.
Nashville-based attorney Kelley Henry, who is experienced with the state’s death penalty law, said Tennessee’s execution order expires at midnight. Henry added that if time runs out after the stay is lifted, the Tennessee Supreme Court would need to set a new execution date.
Pike was 18 when she murdered her Jobs Corps classmate, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, in January 1995. Prosecutors said Pike acted in a jealous rage because she believed Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, then 17. Pike, Shipp, and their friend Shadolla Peterson, then 18, lured Slemmer to an isolated area of the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus. Peterson acted as a lookout while Pike and Shipp carved a pentagram into Slemmer’s chest with a boxcutter, beat her with a meat cleaver, and repeatedly slashed her throat while she pleaded for her life. Investigators said the ordeal lasted 30 minutes and ended with Pike bashing in Slemmer’s head with a large chunk of asphalt, then keeping a piece of her skull as a souvenir.
Pike’s legal troubles continued behind bars. In August 2001, she received an additional 25 years after being convicted of attempting to strangle another inmate to death with a shoestring. In March 2012, authorities thwarted a plot to break her out of the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville involving a corrections officer and a New Jersey personal trainer Pike had been in touch with.
Earlier this week, Pike spoke to the Times of London about her case and her views on another high-profile defendant. “We are both females who got into trouble because of uniquely female issues,” she told the publication, referring to a “kinship” she felt with Lindsay Clancy, the accused child killer who received a mistrial. Pike continued: “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old girl who committed a crime with two other individuals and I was the only one to receive this sentence. There are so many women who don’t get the help they need: me and others.”
Pike also requested that an all-female lethal injection team carry out her execution, claiming she might be traumatized if men are involved.
If the midnight deadline passes, the Tennessee Supreme Court will need to schedule a new execution date.