Christa Pike faces execution in Tennessee as first woman put to death there in over 200 years

Christa Pike, 50, is scheduled to die by lethal injection in Tennessee on Wednesday after decades of failed appeals over the 1995 murder of fellow student Colleen Slemmer, 19, whom Pike and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp beat, tortured and killed at a job training camp; Slemmer was found with a pentagram carved on her chest. Pike was 18 and sentenced to death a year later; Shipp, 17, received life with possible parole. Her lawyers seek clemency, arguing she would not face death if tried today. Only 18 women have been executed in the US since the 1970s.