US Supreme Court denies Christa Pike's last-ditch bid to halt execution
Tennessee inmate Christa Pike has been awaiting execution since her 1996 murder conviction.
US Supreme Court rejects Christa Pike’s last-minute attempt to block execution
If carried out, Christa Pike would become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years
The US Supreme Court has refused to halt the execution of Tennessee inmate Christa Pike, coming just one day before she was due to die by lethal injection.
Pike, 50, has been on death row since she was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the killing of a teenage classmate.
In hopes of securing a last-minute reprieve, her lawyers submitted a petition to the high court before her scheduled execution on Wednesday morning.
But after the court declined to grant that request, Pike is set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Since the 1970s, only 18 women have been executed in the US, compared with 1,663 men.
On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee turned down Pike’s clemency request, saying he would not step in to stop the planned execution.
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend beat, tortured and murdered Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old they met at a job training camp for troubled teens.
She is scheduled to be executed at 11:00 EDT (15:00 GMT) on Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.