The Supreme Court has declined to intervene in the case of Christa Pike, allowing Tennessee to proceed with its first execution of a woman in 200 years.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 10 a.m. Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, where she remains the only woman on death row.
The high court issued its denial less than a day before the execution deadline, offering no explanation for its decision to let the sentence stand.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, had already announced earlier in the week that he would not grant clemency, leaving the Supreme Court as Pike’s final avenue for relief.
Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 for the killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Jobs Corps Center worker from Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1995.
Her legal team had argued that the state’s lethal injection protocol, combined with her medical conditions, would complicate the execution and constitute a violation of the Eighth Amendment.
The challenge also asserted that being observed by male prison officials, being strapped to a gurney, or having an IV inserted near her chest or groin would cause psychological harm given her history of childhood sexual abuse and diagnoses of PTSD and bipolar disorder.
The justices found “that Ms. Pike failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits of her claims,” rejecting her final state court appeal without granting a stay.
The state agreed to several accommodations, including using female correctional officers to transport Pike and attempting to rely on female staff for observation, while also allowing contact with a spiritual adviser in the 12 hours before execution.
Pike told police she initially only wanted to fight Slemmer but ended up killing her in what she described as a frenzied attack, and her attorneys later argued her untreated mental illness left her unable to “put the brakes on.”
Her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was 17 at the time, received a life sentence because he was ineligible for the death penalty, making Pike the only defendant charged capitally in the case.
If carried out, the execution would mark the first time Tennessee has put a woman to death since 1819, and the first execution in the state of someone who was 18 at the time of their crime since the death penalty was reinstated in 1997.
