Court halts Tennessee’s first execution of a woman in two centuries

A US appeals court on Wednesday halted the execution of death row inmate Christa Pike in Tennessee, less than two hours before she was scheduled to become the first woman that state has put to death in more than two hundred years.

The 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a “short stay of execution” to give it time to weigh Pike’s claim that her allegations of childhood sexual abuse were not adequately considered during her sentencing.

Currently the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, Pike was also convicted in August 2001 of attempted first-degree murder in an assault on another inmate, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.