UPDATE | Court halts Tennessee’s first execution of woman in 200 years

A US court on Wednesday halted the lethal injection of a 50-year-old female killer that would have been Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in more than 200 years.

Barely an hour before Christa Pike was due to die by lethal injection, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling to stay the execution, three decades after she murdered a classmate.

National attention

Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend beat and killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, at a job training camp for young people.

The killing gained national attention after Slemmer’s body was found with a pentagram, often seen as a satanic symbol, carved in her chest.

In the United States, only 18 women have been executed since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

“The interests of justice and the finality of Pike’s impending execution compel the entry of a short stay of execution in order to properly analyse the parties’ fully briefed arguments,” the court order said.

The court is set to review whether allegations that Pike was sexually abused as a child were fully considered.

The case has sparked debate over capital punishment for young criminals.

Granted clemency

Pike’s lawyers argue she should be granted clemency due to her young age and mental health issues at the time of the killing.

“She was 18 when she committed her crime, and she was deeply mentally ill,” they wrote in a clemency petition to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who said he would not intervene.

The US Supreme Court rejected on Tuesday an application for a stay of execution, which had argued that Pike’s history as a victim of sexual assault, post-traumatic stress disorder and a blood condition meant a lethal injection would cause “needless suffering.”

Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, had been set to die by lethal injection at 10:00 local time (17:00 SA time) on Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Independent UN rights experts have urged the US government and Tennessee authorities to “immediately halt” the execution and commute her death sentence.

“Pike’s execution would mark the culmination of a trajectory of severe physical and psychological suffering marked by childhood abuse and nearly three decades of solitary confinement on death row,” they said.