Tennessee is scheduled to execute 50-year-old Christa Pike by lethal injection on Wednesday, marking the state’s first execution of a woman in over 200 years. Pike has spent nearly three decades on death row for the 1995 torture and murder of her 19-year-old Job Corps classmate, Colleen Slemmer, when Pike was 18 years old.

Governor Bill Lee denied Pike’s clemency petition on Monday, allowing the execution to proceed despite international outcry and appeals from the United Nations. Advocacy groups and legal teams argued that Pike’s severe childhood trauma, untreated mental illness, and status as the sole woman on Tennessee’s death row—which subjected her to decades of virtual isolation—warranted a commuted sentence.

• Historic Case: Convicted at age 20 in 1996, Pike was the youngest woman sent to death row in the modern U.S. capital punishment era. If carried out, she will be the only U.S. inmate executed who was between 18 and 20 at the time of the crime.

• The Crime: Court records show Pike, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, and a friend attacked Slemmer in a wooded area on the University of Tennessee campus over a dispute regarding Pike’s relationship. Shipp received a life sentence, while Pike received the death penalty.

• Arguments for Clemency: Defense attorneys emphasized that Pike has profoundly changed since her youth, receiving psychiatric care and mentoring fellow inmates, and argued that juries today would weigh her background of severe abuse and mental illness differently.

• State Action: Following the governor’s denial, Pike was returned to 14 days of pre-execution solitary confinement under Tennessee protocol.