Tennessee postpones first execution of woman in 200 years

A federal court in Tennessee has decided to postpone the execution of Christa Pike, 50, convicted of killing a classmate in 1996. This was reported by media outlets including NBC News and Axios. The execution was to take place on September 30. As noted, the court made its decision just an hour before the execution of the sentence. Pike was to be the first execution in Tennessee in 200 years.

The suspension stems from a request by Krista Pike's lawyers to review her client's claims that she was sexually abused as a child and suffers from PTSD afterward. According to her lawyers, holding her and tying her to a medical couch for execution will cause her “severe mental suffering and additional psychological horror.” This makes the very conditions of execution contrary to the constitutional prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.”.

The court considered the arguments of the lawyers serious. “The interests of justice and the irreversibility of the impending execution of Pike require a decision on a short-term postponement of the execution of the sentence in order to properly analyze the arguments of the parties and resolve the contentious issues on the merits of the case,” the court said.

Pike has not denied her guilt in the murder, and the state has not denied she was sexually assaulted as a child. Krista Pike committed the crime at age 18 when she and her boyfriend, then 17, killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. In 1996, she was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. She became the youngest woman sentenced to death in modern American history.

How people tried to make the death penalty humane – in the material “Inhuman factor”.

Jana Christmas