US Supreme Court denies Christa Pike's request to halt execution

The US Supreme Court has declined to stop the execution of Tennessee inmate Christa Pike, scheduled for Wednesday morning. Pike, 50, has been on death row since her conviction in 1996 for the murder of a teenage classmate, Colleen Slemmer. If the execution proceeds, Pike will be the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years. Her attorneys filed a petition with the Supreme Court in hopes of a last-minute reprieve, but the request was denied. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee also denied a clemency request from Pike. Pike was 18 at the time she and her then-boyfriend murdered Slemmer, who was 19. The case attracted significant media attention in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1995, particularly due to the circumstances of the murder, which included a pentagram carved into Slemmer's chest. Pike has denied carving the pentagram. Her defense argues that she was too young to receive the death penalty. At the time of her sentencing, Pike was the youngest person on death row in Tennessee. The execution is set to take place at 11:00 EDT (15:00 GMT) at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Additional reporting from Sareen Habeshian. A clarification was made regarding the description of the pentagram in the original article.