An appeals court in the US federal system has temporarily stopped the execution of Christa Gail Pike from Tennessee, who was supposed to be executed by lethal injection, in a fresh legal battle regarding her age and childhood abuse when she was sentenced to death. Christa Gail Pike, who is 50 years old now, was only 18 years old at the time of her participation in the murder of another teenage girl named 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, in 1995, who was also her fellow student in a Job Corps training centre located in Knoxville.
The recent ruling does not reverse the death sentence of Ms Pike.
On the other hand, the appeals court is now checking whether evidence regarding her alleged childhood sexual assault and rape was taken into account while deciding on her punishment.
This development occurred following the denial of the earlier plea for an injunction by the Supreme Court and the rejection of clemency by Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee.
In case of its occurrence, Pike’s execution would be the first execution of a woman by the state of Tennessee in more than two hundred years. Another reason for which her case became significant was the fact that Pike was only eighteen years old at the time of the crime.
Why the court stopped the execution at the last minute
However, Pike’s execution was initially set for Wednesday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, located in Nashville. Witnesses gathered at the prison ahead of the appeal from the federal appeals court that arrived at about 9 a.m. CDT, according to media reports.
What the court must now decide is whether the abuse that Pike claims she experienced in the past was taken into account when the jury sentenced her to death.
