Pike, 50, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for murdering a teenage classmate. Her attorneys filed a petition with the high court hoping to halt the lethal injection scheduled for Wednesday morning, but the justices declined to intervene.
Pike has spent nearly three decades on death row since her conviction. Her execution places her among a small group nationally. Only 18 women have been executed in the United States according to the report, making the case a rare instance of a state carrying out a death sentence against a female inmate.
The Supreme Court's refusal to step in means Pike's legal options ran out just hours before her scheduled death. It marks a historic and grim milestone for Tennessee. The case also closes out a stretch of decades filled with appeals, hearings and legal maneuvering.