CHRISTA Pike is set to be executed after the Supreme Court overturned a last-minute stop to put the “Satanic” killer to death.
Her execution was just one hour before she was due to be put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday morning.
Now, Christa Gail Pike, 50, she committed at the age of 18.
Witnesses had already gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay.
That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pikes allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.
The Supreme Court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the ruling.
Sotomayor called the courts decision stunning, as it clears the way for the execution to happen before her still-pending legal challenges to her conviction can be properly considered.
Pike, who was 18 at the time, and her boyfriend were convicted of the 1995 stabbing and beating of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.
The case garnered widespread attention back then in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmers body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the satanic panic of the 1980s and 1990s.
The states execution order expires at midnight, according to Kelley Henry, a Nashville-based attorney experienced with Tennessee death penalty law.
If time runs out, the state Supreme Court would need to set a new date.
But, if the execution goes ahead, it will make her the first woman put to death in Tennessee in at least 200 years.
