Tennessee can proceed with the execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike after the US Supreme Court lifted a last-minute stay.
The decision came on Wednesday, about an hour after the stay had halted the lethal injection. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Pike’s lawyers had sought to have her death sentence changed to life imprisonment, arguing that jurors had not been told about her history of sexual abuse or mental health conditions.
Justice Sotomayor said lifting the stay “interferes with the Sixth Circuit’s routine administrative handling of a capital case and unnecessarily prevents the court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim.”
She added: “I see no reason to short-circuit the ordinary process of the appellate review, particularly in light of the grave consequences of an erroneous decision.”
If carried out, the execution would make Pike the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Pike was convicted of murdering her classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995. She had been sentenced to death after attacking Slemmer with a piece of asphalt, carving a pentagram into her chest and keeping part of her skull as a trophy.
Court records state that Pike was sexually abused by her grandmother’s boyfriend before she started pre-school, raped by a neighbour at the age of 11 and raped again by a stranger when she was 17. She has reportedly been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Pike has never denied killing Slemmer, but her lawyers argued that the jury responsible for imposing the death sentence did not hear about her history of abuse.
