No mercy for killer

A woman on death row had her bid to stay her execution rejected by a court in Texas last night.

Double-murderer Karla Faye Tucker, 38, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday when she would become the first woman executed in Texas since 1863.

Her attorneys, who were not available for comment, had pinned much of their hopes on the Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin. But the court ruled that Tucker, who killed two people with a pick axe, had no "constitutional right to mercy".

- Reuters, Austin