Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Monday he would not grant clemency to Christa Pike, clearing the way for her execution by lethal injection, scheduled for 10 a.m. CT on Wednesday, Sept. 30, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction (opens in new tab). Lee issued a short statement and did not explain his decision, USA Today (opens in new tab) reported. Pike’s request for a stay of execution is pending at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, in 1995, their classmate at Knoxville Job Corps; both were convicted. Prosecutors said Pike feared Slemmer was a romantic rival and lured her to a secluded area where the two tortured and killed her, the Associated Press reported. Pike does not deny her guilt.

Her attorneys argue a death sentence is not appropriate for a crime committed at 18 by a teen with untreated mental illness after a childhood of severe sexual abuse and neglect. In a stay application filed Sept. 25, they asked the Supreme Court to take up what they call an open question: whether mental suffering during an execution can violate the Constitution, USA Today (opens in new tab) reported. More than 100 women’s advocacy groups and sexual abuse experts urged Lee to commute the sentence, arguing that the execution process would retraumatize her, according to USA Today (opens in new tab).

In a statement included in her clemency petition, Pike said: “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.”

The state has prevailed so far. The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected Pike’s trauma-based claims, as did a court-appointed special master, Senior Judge Mark Ward, who concluded that the state Department of Correction had “minimized the potential” for her to be triggered and that mental suffering alone does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment, USA Today (opens in new tab) reported. In its Sept. 28 response at the U.S. Supreme Court, Tennessee argued the sentence is just: “Pike’s prior abuse and mental struggles are tragic to say the least,” the state wrote. “But they are no cause to insulate her from a lawfully imposed and exhaustively reviewed death sentence that a jury of her peers imposed purely because of her own horrific conduct.”

Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, told the AP she has waited decades to see the sentence carried out. She described her daughter as easygoing and a “computer geek” who volunteered with the Special Olympics. “She trusted everybody, and that was her downfall,” Martinez said. She told Knoxville station WBIR-TV, as cited by USA Today (opens in new tab), that she plans to attend the execution and that Pike has never apologized to her family.

Shipp, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole because of his age and was denied parole last year. A third teen admitted to being an accessory and received probation, the AP reported.

If the execution goes forward, it would be Tennessee’s first execution of a woman since 1820, Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the AP. The center counts 18 women executed in the U.S. since 1976, about 1% of all executions.

This article will be updated when the Supreme Court acts on the stay request.