The murder that Christa Pike was convicted of demonstrated a brutality and callousness not often seen in women, let alone one so young.

In the last 50 years, the United States has put more than 1,600 people to death. Only 18 of them have been women.

Only one of the 42 people on Tennessee’s death row is a woman, who is imprisoned for allegedly torturing and killing her fellow classmate in 1995. Christa Pike is scheduled to be the first female ...