Court stays Tennessee execution hours before set time

A federal appeals court stayed the execution of Christa Pike on Wednesday morning, less than two hours before Tennessee was set to carry out its first execution of a woman in more than 200 years. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the stay until further order, citing new arguments about Pike's traumatic childhood marked by years of sexual assault. The state quickly asked the US Supreme Court to vacate the stay. Pike, 50, was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 10 a.m. Central Time at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. She is the only woman on Tennessee's death row, convicted and sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville. Pike was 18 at the time, the youngest age at which someone can be sentenced to death in the state. Governor Bill Lee had denied clemency, and the Supreme Court rejected her stay bid on Tuesday. If the execution proceeds, it would also be Tennessee's first execution of someone for a crime committed at 18 since 1976.
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