Divided Supreme Court lets Christa Pike execution go forward in Tennessee

The Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for the execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee for the brutal 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, who was a 19-year-old classmate of Pike’s at the Job Corps Center in Knoxville.

The court’s three Democratic appointees dissented from what they said was the majority’s rushed decision to short-circuit the normal appeals process and allow the execution to proceed.

The majority did not explain its decision to lift a block that a lower court panel placed on the execution earlier in the day, prompting the state to ask the high court for speedy relief.

“Stunningly, the Court acquiesces,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. They said it was the latest example of what they described as the Republican-appointed majority abusing its role.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an application from Pike, who was 18 at the time of the crime, to halt her execution that was scheduled for Wednesday. In that application, her lawyers cited clinical psychological evidence that Pike’s post-traumatic stress disorder “would be profoundly triggered before and during the execution process because it will simulate her repeated rapes and sexual abuse as a child.” They wanted the justices to put off her execution so that the high court could consider whether severe psychological torture violates the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment.

But then a divided federal appellate panel halted the execution on Wednesday morning. The panel majority said it was entering a “short stay” to properly analyze the legal issues Pike raised, over a dissent that called it “another last-ditch meritless effort to delay a lawful execution.”

The state then brought the matter back to Washington, urging the high court to lift the stay, calling it an unjust reward for Pike’s “gamesmanship.” The Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed justices have made similar criticisms of capital defense litigation.

Dissenting from the majority’s unexplained order on Wednesday, Sotomayor said she saw “no reason to short-circuit the ordinary process of appellate review, particularly in light of the grave consequences of an erroneous decision.” The Obama appointee said the state’s desire to expedite an execution by a few days or weeks did not outweigh Pike’s fundamental interest in her own life.

Sotomayor said the court’s capital case precedents demand caution before making a decision the court can’t undo, noting the court often says it’s one “of review, not of first view.” She said the court’s decision Wednesday, “as it has too often lately, chooses to overlook that principle precisely when it matters most.”

Opposing the state’s application for her execution to go forward, Pike’s lawyers said her case raises “grave concerns about the execution of a teenaged survivor of child sexual abuse and rape based on a record whose integrity was tainted by specious arguments and evidence the State now disavows.”

They said that for the first time last month, the state conceded that Pike was a teenage survivor of child sexual abuse and rape who was struggling with unmedicated bipolar disorder and PTSD at the time of her crime. That’s significant, they said, because the state during prior litigation had called her a pathological liar and suggested she was making her history up.

“For the State to now recognize that the abuse and its impact were very real certainly impugns the integrity of the state court process as well as the habeas court’s careful review of the constitutionality of that process,” they said, calling it “inconceivable that in the 21st century, the criminal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider those facts in weighing the defendant’s moral culpability.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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