What changed
The US Supreme Court has declined to halt Christa Pike’s scheduled execution in Tennessee. Governor Bill Lee denied clemency on Monday, leaving Pike due to receive a lethal injection at 11:00 EDT Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Pike, now 50, was sentenced to death in 1996 for murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. If the execution proceeds, Pike would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Why it matters
The decision removes the last reported federal-court request for a stay before the execution date. Pike’s lawyers argued that she was 18 when Slemmer was killed and that an 18-year-old brain should not be treated as fully adult for a death sentence.
The case also highlights how unusual the execution would be. Since the 1970s, 18 women have been executed in the United States, compared with 1,663 men.
The scheduled execution could still be affected by an intervention or development not described here. For now, though, Tennessee has cleared the final reported legal obstacle to carrying it out.
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