Tennessee set to execute a woman for first time in 200 years
In January 1995, Pike and her then-boyfriend tortured and killed a fellow classmate
A woman is set to be executed in Tennessee for the first time in more than two centuries.
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Christa Pike became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row in the US when, aged 18, she and her then-boyfriend tortured and killed a classmate in 1995.
Pike, now 50, is due to be executed by lethal injection in Tennessee at 10am local time (4pm UK time) on Wednesday.
She would also be the only person in the modern era of US capital punishment to be executed in Tennessee for a crime committed as a teenager.
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an 11th-hour bid for a stay of execution, which is set to take place at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
In January 1995, Pike and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp lured 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at Knoxville Job Corps, into a wooded area where they tortured and killed her.
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The grisly nature of the slaying, which involved the perpetrators carving the shape of a pentagram in the victim's chest and taking a chunk of her skull as a souvenir of the carnage, drew intense media coverage at the time.
Prosecutors said Pike viewed Ms Slemmer as a rival for the affections of her boyfriend.
Pike and Shipp confessed to the killing, and both were convicted the following year of first-degree murder.
Because Shipp was 17 at the time of Ms Slemmer's murder, jurors could not consider the death penalty, and he received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Their co-defendant, Shadolla Peterson, who was 18 at the time of the murder and had acted as a lookout for the other two, appeared as a witness for the prosecution and received probation.
Currently the only woman on the southern state'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.
In a 226-page petition asking the governor to commute her death sentence to a life sentence without the possibility of parole, her lawyers documented her history as a childhood victim of violence, neglect and sexual abuse, including two rapes at ages 11 and 17.
They also cited the diagnoses she received in prison for bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Her lawyers also pointed to evidence that Pike's mother drank heavily during pregnancy, contributing to faulty brain development that made it difficult for their client to control her impulses as a young person.
"The 18-year-old girl suffering from severe mental illness and near-debilitating trauma no longer exists," her lawyers wrote in response to Lee's denial of clemency.
"Christa is a 50-year-old remorseful woman who understands her actions, receives proper treatment for her mental illness, and provides for and guides fellow incarcerated women."
Ms Slemmer's mother, May Martinez, has spoken out in support of the execution.
Executions of female prison inmates are exceedingly rare in the US, with women accounting for just 18 of the 1,683 people put to death since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Before Wednesday, Tennessee had executed 17 people.
Pike's case has drawn international attention, with a group of United Nations human rights experts issuing a recent statement calling for commutation of her death sentence.
Sexual violence and trauma experts have also spoken out on her behalf, arguing that the procedures surrounding lethal injection would likely cause Pike to experience severe, traumatic flashbacks of child sexual abuse and rape, adding to the cruelty and anguish of her death.
Tennessee prison officials in May aborted attempts to execute a man convicted of murders after failing to find a suitable vein for a lethal injection.