Justice suspends execution of women in Tennessee state at the last hour

Pike, currently 50, would be the first woman executed in the U.S. state of Tennessee in at least 200 years.

The court intends to examine whether Pike's allegations of sexual abuse and child abuse were duly considered when he was sentenced to the death penalty.

It was not immediately clear whether the Tennessee Attorney General will appeal the decision, nor how long the execution will be suspended.

The witnesses of the execution were already assembled at the Riverbend maximum security prison in Nashville, when the court order was issued around 9:00 local.

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a colleague of both at a vocational training center in Knoxville in 1995.

According to the prosecution, Pike, who feared Slemmer was trying to win over her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on January 12, 1995.

The young woman was attacked with an x-act and a large piece of asphalt.

Pike's boyfriend, who was 17 at the time, admitted to having recorded a pentagram on the victim's body, a symbol then associated with Satanism.

The crime received broad media coverage, at a time marked in the United States by the phenomenon known as “Satanic Panic”, during the 1980s and 1990s.

Pike does not deny having participated in the murder, but his advocates argue that he should be considered the age he was at the time, mental health problems and a history of serious sexual abuse, including rapes since childhood.

Federal public defender Stephen Ferrell claimed that Pike's conviction is an exception, as other 18-year-olds sentenced to death in Tennessee later saw the cancelled sentences.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Tuesday a request from Pike's lawyers to suspend execution.

On Monday, Tennessee governor Bill Lee had refused to grant him mercy.

Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, argues, for her part, that the execution by lethal injection should be carried out, stating that she has been waiting for decades for the sentence to be fulfilled.

Pike's boyfriend was sentenced to life imprisonment with possibility of parole, while Pike was the only person involved in the case sentenced to death.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Tennessee has not executed a woman in at least 200 years, although the absence of complete records prevents accurate determination when the last execution took place.

Since 1976, 18 women have been executed in the United States, accounting for about 1% of all executions in the country during that period.