Christa Pike, who was 18 when she killed her 19-year-old classmate in Tennessee, United States in 1995, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday, in what would be the state’s first execution of a woman in 200 years.

Pike, now 50, was convicted alongside her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, in the killing of Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at Knoxville Job Corps. Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to an isolated area, where the pair tortured and killed her.

The case drew widespread attention because of the brutality of the killing, the young ages of those involved and the carving of a satanic symbol into Slemmer’s body.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday that he would not grant Pike clemency, while her attorneys have asked the US Supreme Court to halt the execution.

Pike does not dispute that she killed Slemmer. However, her lawyers and supporters are challenging the death sentence, arguing that she was a teenager with untreated mental illness who had endured severe sexual abuse and neglect throughout her childhood.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike was sexually abused from toddlerhood and was raped at ages 11 and 17. He argued that lawyers who represented her during the penalty phase of her trial failed to present the jury with crucial details about her childhood or adequately address her age.

Pike was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. She told police that she initially intended only to fight Slemmer before the confrontation escalated into a frenzied killing.

In her clemency petition, her attorneys argued that her untreated mental illness and traumatic upbringing left her unable to “put the brakes on.”

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. 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,” Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition.

Ferrell said understanding of adolescent brain development has advanced since Pike was sentenced and argued that her death sentence is unusual when compared with other cases involving young offenders.

Shipp was 17 when Slemmer was killed and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole because of his age. He was denied parole last year. A third teenager who admitted to being an accessory received probation.

Ferrell also said other people sentenced to death in Tennessee for crimes committed at 18 have had their sentences reduced during the modern death penalty era.

The Death Penalty Information Center said 275 people have been executed across the United States for crimes committed at ages 18, 19 or 20 during the modern death penalty era, although death sentences for offenders in that age group have become increasingly uncommon.

“If Christa Pike was tried today, I do not believe a jury that knew about the documented sexual abuse and neglect she experienced as a child would sentence her to death,” Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said.

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, has spent decades waiting for Pike’s sentence to be carried out and supports the planned lethal injection.

Martinez said her daughter, who was also 19 when she was killed, never had the opportunity to grow older.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” Martinez said.

She described Slemmer as someone who volunteered with the Special Olympics, enjoyed roller skating and hoped to build a career in computers.

“She was easygoing. She was a computer geek to begin with. She and my husband would build and tear apart the computers constantly,” Martinez said. “She trusted everybody, and that was her downfall.”

Martinez recalled receiving a call from her daughter on the night of the killing, although the conversation was repeatedly interrupted by poor reception. By the time Martinez called back, Slemmer had already left.

“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst. Colleen’s birthday was last week. She would have been 51,” Martinez said.

The 1995 killing caused widespread shock in Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike attacked Slemmer with a box cutter and struck her with a large piece of asphalt.

The case also became associated with the “satanic panic” that spread across parts of the US during the 1980s and 1990s. Shipp has acknowledged that he carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satanism, into Slemmer’s body.

If the execution goes ahead, Tennessee will carry out its first execution of a woman since 1820, according to Maher.

Executions of female prisoners remain uncommon in the United States. The Death Penalty Information Center says 18 women have been executed nationwide since 1976, accounting for about 1% of all executions.

Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin, a transgender woman, in 2023 for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to have been the first execution of a transgender woman in the US. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, the first female federal inmate put to death in nearly seven decades. Georgia executed a woman in 2015. (CNN)