Murderer Rebecca Anne Massey will serve out her time in jail after a court ended her fight to overturn her conviction.
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Massey, pictured, applied to the High Court for special leave to appeal the guilty verdict, but on Friday two judges refused, saying they were not persuaded there were grounds.
Massey is serving 16 years behind bars, with a non-parole period of 10 years, for the murder of Elizabeth Booshand in July 2008.
A bid to have the murder conviction overturned was dismissed in the ACT Court of Appeal in January.
Massey then applied to the High Court for leave to appeal against that decision.
Animosity between Massey and Booshand turned into a confrontation outside a Charnwood takeaway five years ago.
A verbal altercation turned physical outside the shop and the fight continued in a nearby alley.
Booshand was fatally stabbed. Massey admitted knifing the deceased, but maintained she acted in self-defence and never meant to kill.
An ACT Supreme Court jury found Massey guilty of murder in 2011.
Massey's legal team unsuccessfully appealed against the conviction on four grounds, including that trial judge Malcolm Gray misdirected the jury about the law of self-defence.
Justice Gray asked jurors to decide whether Massey's aggression or her willing participation in the fight had ended before she stabbed Booshand.
The ACT Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal in January, finding witness evidence varied, making the altercation difficult to summarise for the trial judge.
Massey sought special leave to challenge that decision in the High Court. Her barrister, Jack Pappas, told the court on Friday that the Court of Appeal's decision contradicted a finding by a Victorian court in a similar case.
Mr Pappas said the trial judge's directions had confused jurors on whether there had been a break in the aggression and denied them facts on which to base their verdict.
The ACT office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said the issue had been made plain for the jury to determine.
Judges Susan Crennan and Stephen Gageler rejected the application on two grounds.
The first was there were not sufficient reasons to doubt the conclusions of the Court of Appeal.
Second, the judges were not persuaded there was a conflict between the ACT and the Victorian decisions that would warrant special leave to appeal.
The application was dismissed.
