As previously reported by RadarOnline.com, the Court of Appeals halted the execution an hour before it was scheduled, citing Tennessee’s “concession” of Pike’s traumatic childhood, which included r— and sexual abuse.
The court wrote this undoes the “foundation” of her sentence.
“Pike also cites scholarly authority supporting her argument that the State’s representations about her history of sexual abuse tainted the state court proceedings and the subsequent federal ones by introducing damaging stereotypes of survivors of sexual assault,” the order reads.
Following the delay, on late Wednesday night, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the execution of Christa Pike to go forward.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices overturned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit’s temporary stay of the execution.
The court justices who voted to uphold the stay were Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“The Court’s decision to vacate that stay interferes with the Sixth Circuit’s routine administrative handling of a capital case and unnecessarily prevents that court from giving due consideration to Pike’s claim,” Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion.
“Worse, the Court grants such extraordinary relief solely to allow the State to execute Pike before litigation over her conviction has properly run its course in the lower courts.”