Christa Pike is set to be executed in Tennessee for the first time in 200 years, after the governor rejected the latest clemency request

Christa Pike, 50, is set to be executed on Wednesday in the US state of Tennessee after Governor Bill Lee rejected her latest clemency request. If the execution goes ahead as planned, it would be the first execution of a woman in Tennessee since 1819.

Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of a 19-year-old woman near the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. At the time of the crime, Pike was 18 and, along with two other teenagers, was involved in torturing the victim. Her boyfriend, who was 17, was sentenced to life in prison.

Pike is the only woman on Tennessee's death row. Activists, Amnesty International and UN experts have called for the execution to be suspended, citing the abuse and violence she suffered during childhood.

The death penalty is legal in more than 24 US states, but women account for only approximately 2% of people sentenced to death. From 1976 to the present, 18 women have been executed in the United States.