Supreme Court Lifts Stay, Allows Christa Pike's Execution

The US Supreme Court lifted a lower court's last-minute pause Wednesday evening, allowing Tennessee to execute Christa Pike. The execution by injection had been scheduled for 10am before it was blocked by the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. After the Supreme Court's announcement, a Department of Correction spokesperson said the execution would take place Wednesday night, per the AP; the execution order expires at midnight. Witnesses had remained at the Riverbend Maxiumum Security Institution in Nashville while the high court considered the case.

The high court's two-sentence order offered no explanation for granting Tennessee's request to overturn the stay. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. The majority's decision allows the state "to execute Pike before litigation over her conviction has properly run its course in the lower courts," Sotomayor wrote, per the Tennessean. "I see no reason to short-circuit the ordinary process of appellate review, particularly in light of the grave consequences of an erroneous decision," the dissent said, per the New York Times. Pike was 18 when she was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville—the minimum age at which a person can receive the death penalty.