WASHINGTON -- A Chowchilla prisoner will have her fate decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

For inmate Tara Sheneva Williams, this is not a victory. Williams had won an appeal that overturned her conviction for a 1993 murder in Long Beach. But on Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear California's challenge to a lower court's decision.

"It's really sad," Williams' attorney Kurt David Hermansen said Friday. "She's a mom with two kids, and she was hoping to get out."

Williams will have to wait while the Supreme Court considers whether the lower appellate court went too far in overturning her conviction. Given the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' general track record, Williams' hopes may be a long shot.

Last term, the Supreme Court reversed the 9th Circuit 19 times and upheld the San Francisco-based appellate court five times, according to statistics compiled by the Scotusblog website. This term, the 9th Circuit has been reversed four times and upheld once.

Williams, now 39, was sentenced in 1999 to life without the possibility of parole. At the Central California Women's Facility, she has been studying for her associate's degree; Hermansen said she is due to graduate this spring.

In 1993, Williams was in a different place altogether.

That October, Williams agreed to drive two friends around Long Beach in search of a place to rob. The trio found a liquor store to their liking; Williams stayed in the car while her friends entered the store. One of the friends, Carde Taylor, shot and killed the store owner.

"Williams told the police that, while she knew Taylor was armed, there had never been a plan to rob the store during daylight hours," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the 9th Circuit last year.

Taylor and Williams were both convicted of "special circumstances" murder. The 35-year-old Taylor is also incarcerated at Chowchilla.

Williams was convicted after Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard R. Romero dismissed a holdout juror and replaced him with an alternate. This dismissal, and the events leading up to it, formed the basis of her appeals.

Romero dismissed the juror, who was identified only as Juror 6, after concluding he was biased against the prosecution. The 9th Circuit called this an "intrusion into heated deliberations" that violated Williams' constitutional rights.

The trial proceedings and juror deliberations, though, won't necessarily be the center of the Supreme Court's deliberations.

Instead, the Supreme Court will focus on whether Williams had exhausted all her potential remedies after her state and federal habeas corpus petitions had been rejected.

A date for the oral argument has not been set.