<p class="wp-block-paragraph"><a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/tennessee/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tennessee</a> inmate Christa Pike was still awake and snoring nearly an hour after she appeared to receive two doses of pentobarbital on Wednesday, just hours after the Supreme Court permitted the execution to proceed.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Pike’s lawyers filed an emergency motion to the Supreme Court late Wednesday to halt and stay the execution, claiming she was in "unnecessary agony," also filing motions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit and district court. A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Corrections stated they could not immediately elaborate on what had happened.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">The 6th Circuit had stayed Pike’s execution in the eleventh hour, as judges indicated they wanted to review whether her allegations of sexual abuse and rape as a child were fully considered before she was sentenced to death. The high court had previously declined to intervene but allowed it to go forward on Wednesday evening.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Pike, 50, was set to be the first woman to be executed in Tennessee in over 200 years, with the execution being attempted at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. She was scheduled for death by lethal injection on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. before the appeals court intervened.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Justices <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/elena-kagan/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Elena Kagan</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/ketanji-brown-jackson/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ketanji Brown Jackson</a>, and <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/sonia-sotomayor/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sonia Sotomayor</a> dissented, arguing that allowing the case to move forward prevents the lower court from considering Pike’s allegations from her childhood.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Pike was convicted of murdering her classmate, Colleen Slemmer, 19, in 1995 when she was 18 years old in an envious rage. In 1996, she was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy. She has been in prison for more than 30 years.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Prosecutors presented evidence that Pike and her boyfriend, 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp, tortured Slemmer, slashed her with a box cutter and meat cleaver, carved a satanic pentagram symbol into her chest, smashed her head with a rock, and took a fragment of her skull as a souvenir. Pike committed the murder over an intense romantic jealousy of Slemmer, who allegedly attempted to steal her boyfriend’s attention. Shipp was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder.</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Pike had requested clemency from Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN), but the governor rejected the application. A day later, the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/supreme-court/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Supreme Court</a> denied her emergency application for a stay.</p>