Governor Lee denied clemency Monday, saying he would not intervene

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to halt the execution of Tennessee death-row inmate Christa Pike, scheduled for Wednesday by lethal injection. Her attorneys had filed a petition with the high court ahead of the execution date. Pike, 50, is set to be executed at 11:00 EDT (15:00 GMT) Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. If the execution proceeds, she would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Pike was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old she met at a job training camp for troubled teens. Pike was 18 at the time of the killing. Her attorneys have argued that “an 18-year-old brain is not an adult brain,” contending she was too young at the time of the murder to be sentenced to death.

On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee denied a request for clemency from Pike, saying he would not intervene in her planned execution.

The case has drawn national attention in part because of the rarity of women put to death in the United States. Only 18 women have been executed in the US since the 1970s, compared with 1,663 men over the same period, according to figures cited by BBC News. Pike would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries.

The underlying crime occurred in 1995, when Pike and her then-boyfriend beat, tortured and killed Slemmer. The killing created a media frenzy in Knoxville, Tennessee when Slemmer’s body was found with a pentagram — a symbol of Satanic ritual — carved into her chest. Pike has denied carving the pentagram herself, according to BBC News.

Two other residents of the training camp later testified that Pike had bragged about the murder before and after, and that she had shown them a piece of Slemmer’s skull. Pike had accused Slemmer of insulting her and trying to steal her boyfriend.

When she was first incarcerated, Pike was the youngest person on Tennessee’s death row, according to the Tennessee Department of Corrections.