US Supreme Court allows execution of Christa Pike to go ahead

The US Supreme Court has approved the execution of Christa Pike, making her the first woman to face death by lethal injection in Tennessee in over 200 years. Pike, 50, was convicted of murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in 1996, when she was just 18 years old. She and her then-partner, Tadaryl Shipp, beat, tortured and killed Slemmer at a job training camp for troubled teens.

Tennessee's attorney general appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn a last-minute reprieve granted by an appeals court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative, approved the application to vacate the stay of the execution. The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, stating that the decision allowed Tennessee to execute Pike before she could challenge her conviction legally.

Pike's lawyers argued that the state previously claimed she lied about sexual abuse as a child, but recently, the state admitted to her suffering sexual abuse and rape. Pike's clemency request was denied by Tennessee's governor. Since 1976, when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, only 18 women have been executed in the US, accounting for about 1% of all US executions.