Christa Pike\u2019s last major efforts to stop her execution have been denied, leaving the 50-year-old Tennessee death row prisoner scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday, September 30.<\/p>\n
The United States Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Pike\u2019s application for a stay of execution and also rejected her petition asking the nation\u2019s highest court to review her case.<\/p>\n
The decisions represented a major final setback for Pike\u2019s legal team, which had continued seeking intervention as the execution date approached.<\/p>\n
Pike is scheduled to be executed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. If the execution proceeds, she will become the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than 200 years.<\/p>\n
Her attorneys had argued that Pike should not be executed, pointing to her age at the time of the crime, her childhood history, mental health concerns and neurological issues. Pike was 18 when 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer was killed in Knoxville in 1995.<\/p>\n
The defence had sought to have her death sentence stopped or reduced to life imprisonment without parole.<\/p>\n
Another potential avenue had already closed when Tennessee Governor Bill Lee declined to grant Pike clemency, allowing the execution process to continue.<\/p>\n
Pike was convicted and sentenced to death for Slemmer\u2019s murder after prosecutors said the teenager was lured to an isolated area and killed. The case has remained one of Tennessee\u2019s most closely watched death penalty cases because Pike is the only woman on the state\u2019s death row and was a teenager when the crime was committed.<\/p>\n
Her legal challenges continued into the final days before the scheduled execution.<\/p>\n
On September 25, Pike\u2019s attorneys filed an application with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a stay while asking the court to consider constitutional challenges surrounding her execution. Tennessee opposed the request, and Pike\u2019s attorneys subsequently filed a reply.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, September 29, the Supreme Court issued its decision: the application for a stay was denied and the petition for review was denied.<\/p>\n
With clemency refused and the Supreme Court declining to intervene, attention has now shifted to Tennessee\u2019s scheduled execution.<\/p>\n
As of early Wednesday morning, Pike remained scheduled to be executed by lethal injection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Christa Pike\u2019s Last Efforts To Stop Historic Tennessee Execution Denied Hours Before Scheduled Death<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trinidad-and-tobago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}