Minutes before Tennessee was poised to carry out a historic execution, a federal appeals court stepped in and stopped it.
A US court has halted the execution of a woman in Tennessee shortly before she was due to die from lethal injection, three decades after she murdered a classmate.
Christa Pike was set to become the first woman that state has put to death in more than two centuries.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a last-minute ruling to stay until further notice the execution of Pike.
Pike, whose clemency petition highlighting childhood trauma and sexual abuse was denied by Governor Bill Lee, would also be the only person in the modern era of US capital punishment to be executed in Tennessee for a crime committed as a teenager.
The US Supreme Court yesterday rejected an 11th-hour bid for a stay of execution, which was set to take place at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, the state capital.
Pike, now 50, was 18 in January 1995 when she, a 17-year-old boyfriend and a third companion lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at their Knoxville Job Corps vocational centre, into a wooded area where they tortured and killed her.
The grisly nature of the slaying drew intense media coverage at the time.
Trial testimony indicated that Pike viewed Ms Slemmer as a rival for the affections of her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp.
The US Supreme Court yesterday rejected an 11th-hour bid for a stay of execution
Pike and Shipp confessed to the killing, and both were convicted the following year of first-degree murder.
Pike was sentenced to death, while Shipp received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Their co-defendant, Shadolla Peterson, who was 18 at the time of the murder and had acted as a lookout for the other two, appeared as a witness for the prosecution and received probation.
Currently the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, Pike was also convicted in August 2001 of attempted first-degree murder in an assault on another inmate, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.
In a 226-page petition asking the governor to commute her death penalty to a life sentence without the possibility of parole, her lawyers documented her history as the childhood victim of violence, neglect and sexual abuse, including two rapes at ages 11 and 17.
They cited the diagnoses she received in prison for bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Teen who committed murder ‘no longer exists’
Her legal team also argued that Pike’s upbringing and early development shaped her behaviour at the time of the crime, citing evidence that her mother drank heavily during pregnancy and saying the resulting impaired brain development left their client struggling to control 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 in response to Mr Lee’s denial of clemency.
“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 spoken out in support of the execution.
Pike’s clemency petition highlighting childhood trauma and sexual abuse was denied by Governor Bill Lee
Executions of female prison inmates are exceedingly rare in the US, with women accounting for just 18 of the 1,683 people put to death since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Before today, Tennessee had executed 17 people.
Pike’s case has drawn international attention, with a group of United Nations human rights experts issuing a recent statement calling for commutation of her death sentence.
Experts in sexual violence and trauma have also weighed in on her behalf, contending that the process surrounding lethal injection would likely trigger severe, traumatic flashbacks tied to child sexual abuse and rape, compounding the cruelty and anguish of her death.
Tennessee prison officials in May aborted attempts to execute a man convicted of murders after failing to find a suitable vein for a lethal injection.
