Christa Pike, 50, is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, which would mark Tennessee's first execution of a woman in 200 years. Governor Bill Lee announced on Monday that he would not grant clemency in her case.
Pike was convicted alongside her boyfriend in the 1995 killing of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, a classmate at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors stated that Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival.
Pike's attorneys have requested that the supreme court grant a stay of execution. They argue that a death sentence is not appropriate for a crime committed by a teenager with untreated mental illness and a history of abuse.
Pike does not deny her guilt and stated in her clemency petition, "I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime."