Nashville, Tennessee - A Tennessee woman is expected to be put to death on Wednesday for the murder of a high-school friend in what would be the first execution of a women in the state for two centuries.

A decision by the US Supreme Court late Wednesday cleared the way for Christa Pike – the only woman on the state's death row – to be given a lethal injection after hours of dramatic legal wrangling up and down the judicial system.

A lawyer for Pike, Luke Ihnen, told AFP there are no plans to file for further reprieve and that the execution "should start any minute if it hasn't already."

"We do not plan to file anything else," Ihnen said.

Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend beat and killed Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp for young people.

She had been scheduled for execution at 10:00AM at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, but it was halted barely an hour before by a lower court.

That court was set to review whether allegations that Pike was sexually abused as a child were fully considered in her original prosecution.

"The interests of justice and the finality of Pike's impending execution compel the entry of a short stay of execution in order to properly analyze the parties' fully briefed arguments," the order said.

But the Supreme Court later said it could go ahead, stating: "The September 30, 2026 order of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit… granting a stay of execution is vacated."

Liberal Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissented.

"The Court's decision… unnecessarily prevents that [lower] court from giving due consideration to Pike's claim," the dissenting justices wrote.

"Worse, the Court grants such extraordinary relief solely to allow the State to execute Pike before litigation over her conviction has properly run its course in the lower courts."