Appeals court grants last-gasp stay of execution for Tennessee’s only female death-row inmate

The eleventh-hour stay was granted by a Sixth Circuit panel to allow for consideration of Christa Pike's motion to reconsider a previous habeas petition.CINCINNATI (CN) — Christa Pike, who was set to become the first woman executed by the state of Tennessee in over 200 years, successfully obtained a stay of execution from the Sixth Circuit on Wednesday morning.The appeals court halted the planned lethal injection in the hours leading up to Pike’s execution in order to consider the merits of her appeal of a lower court order.She was convicted alongside her boyfriend for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at a Tennessee job training facility.Pike, now 50, was 18 at the time of the murder.Slemmer was tortured before she was killed, and a pentagram was carved into her chest while she was still alive before Pike ultimately smashed the victim’s skull with a large piece of asphalt.A piece of Slemmer’s skull was found in Pike’s jacket when she was arrested shortly after the murder.Pike has never denied killing Slemmer, but after she was convicted and sentenced to death, she argued throughout the appeals process her mental illnesses and violent childhood trauma should have played a larger role in sentencing.After the conviction, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, and claimed she was sexually and physically assaulted from a young age.Pike’s case also raised the question of whether individuals convicted at such a young age should be sentenced to death or given a chance at rehabilitation.The Sixth Circuit denied her initial habeas petition in August 2019, finding that the aggravating circumstances of the brutal crime outweighed the mitigation evidence.The state of Tennessee initially refuted her claims of sexual assault, but its recent about-face led Pike to file a request for a stay of execution that was ultimately successful.“Pike contends that the state’s concession of her history of child sexual abuse and rape ’erodes the foundation’ of her state court proceedings,” Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch, a Barack Obama appointee, said in Wednesday’s opinion.According to Pike, her initial habeas proceedings were “tainted” by the state’s refusal to acknowledge the validity of her sexual abuse claims, which she argues allows her to challenge the outcome of that first habeas petition.Tennessee contends she merely seeks to relitigate the merits of her unsuccessful petition, but the appeals panel ordered a stay to consider the merits of her appeal.U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Griffin, an appointee of George W. Bush, dissented from the lead opinion and called Pike’s filing a “last-ditch meritless effort to delay a lawful execution.”Griffin agreed with Tennessee that Pike’s filing is a second or successive habeas petition barred under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, or AEDPA, and is based solely on “statements of empathy” made by prosecutors at a hearing on the legality of the proposed lethal injection procedure.“According to Pike, had the state conceded the veracity of Pike’s reported sexual abuse and rapes eighteen years ago, the state court would have reached a different conclusion as to Pike’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim. In other words, Pike challenges the same claim as before — the ineffective assistance of counsel at the sentencing stage,” he said in his dissent.“Because that claim has been raised, AEDPA requires that the second or successive petition be dismissed. I would accordingly deny Pike’s Motion to Remand and dismiss Pike’s second or successive application pursuant to AEDPA,” Griffin concluded.U.S. Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore, an appointee of Bill Clinton, concurred with Stranch.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads