WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court is rejecting a Louisiana inmate's appeal to consider a nationwide ban on the death penalty.

The justices on Tuesday turned away a challenge from death row inmate Lamondre Tucker.

Tucker's appeal is the latest to challenge capital punishment as unconstitutional after Justice Stephen Breyer issued a dissent last year calling for a re-evaluation of the death penalty. Breyer criticized the process as arbitrary, prone to mistakes and time-consuming.

The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Tucker's conviction for killing his pregnant girlfriend after she told him she believed he was her baby's father.

Jurors sentenced then 18-year-old Lamondre Tucker to death after convicting him of killing Tavia Sills in September 2009.

Breyer dissented from the denial and was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.