The mother of Christa Pike’s victim has described the chaotic scene inside Tennessee’s execution chamber as “a mess” after Pike reportedly remained alive following two rounds of lethal injection.
May Martinez traveled from Florida to Nashville this week to witness the execution of Pike, who was convicted in 1996 for the 1995 murder of Martinez’s 19-year-old daughter, Colleen SlemmerSpeaking to NBC News by phone Thursday morning, Martinez said she entered the prison expecting to finally witness the sentence carried out after more than three decades.
Instead, the night ended with Pike being transported to a hospital.
“They went to try to execute her, and she didn’t die,” Martinez said.
According to Martinez, witnesses initially received little explanation about what was happening inside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
She said it was only after they were taken upstairs and spoke with the commissioner that they learned the execution had failed.
“We didn’t know anything until we got up to the office and saw the commissioner,” Martinez recalled. “And he said that it didn’t work, that it didn’t work, and she’s on her way to the hospital.”
Asked what she would tell Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and the state attorney general following the failed procedure, Martinez gave a blunt response.
“They f***** up.”
Martinez also said she saw no indication that Pike showed remorse during the execution attempt.
Pike was sentenced to death for the killing of Slemmer, who was 19 when she died in Knoxville in January 1995.
Prosecutors said Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, attacked Slemmer after Pike accused the young woman of trying to take her boyfriend.
The case became one of Tennessee’s most notorious death-row cases, and Martinez has spent decades speaking publicly about her daughter and the impact of her murder.
According to the Associated Press, the execution procedure began at approximately 8 p.m. local time Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
Witnesses reportedly watched as officials attempted to carry out the lethal injection.
But the process soon became unusual.
The curtain separating the execution chamber from the witness room was reportedly closed twice.
At one point, media witnesses were also asked to leave.
Tennessee’s execution protocol reportedly calls for a second round of injections when the first dose fails to cause death.
However, the protocol does not specify what officials should do if an inmate remains alive after the second round has also been administered.
That uncertainty quickly became the center of an emergency legal battle.
Pike’s attorneys filed an emergency motion seeking to stop the execution and obtain immediate medical treatment for her.
U.S. District Judge Clifton L. Corker granted the request after medical personnel had begun treating Pike.
Attention then shifted to why the lethal injection had failed.
Dr. Joel Zivot, a professor at Emory University School of Medicine who was retained by Pike’s attorneys, said one possibility was that Pike never reached a sufficiently high concentration of pentobarbital in her bloodstream.
If that happened, he said, the drug may not have caused the fatal suppression of breathing or cardiovascular function expected during the execution.
Zivot also raised concerns about the length of time before resuscitation efforts reportedly began, warning that a delay could potentially result in brain injury.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has defended the actions of staff involved in the procedure.
A department spokesperson told The Tennessean that officials followed every stage of the execution protocol approved by the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.
The department also said the lethal injection drug used in the procedure “has consistently been effective.”
Officials maintained that the existing protocol did not authorize further procedures once the permitted steps had been completed.
The extraordinary events have now prompted a wider investigation.
Gov. Bill Lee ordered what he described as a “comprehensive, third-party review” to determine exactly what happened during Pike’s attempted execution.
The review is expected to examine the procedure itself as well as the circumstances that allowed Pike to survive the two rounds of lethal injection.
Tennessee’s final scheduled execution of the year will also no longer proceed as originally planned.
The incident reportedly marks the second serious problem involving a Tennessee execution this year.
In May, prison staff were unable to establish a suitable vein during the scheduled execution of death-row inmate Tony Carruthers.
For Martinez, however, the controversy surrounding the execution does not change why she traveled to Tennessee.
Her focus remains on Colleen.
Before the execution attempt, Martinez spoke to the outlet Clarín about the daughter she lost more than three decades ago.
She remembered Colleen not simply as the victim at the center of a notorious murder case, but as a 19-year-old young woman who loved computers, retro video games, and spending time at the roller rink.
Those ordinary details are what Martinez has tried to keep alive while years of appeals, hearings, and death-row litigation continued around Pike.
“I am her voice,” Martinez said.
“Someone has to speak for Colleen.”
Now, after a night that was supposed to bring a definitive conclusion instead ended with an emergency trip to the hospital and a state-ordered investigation, Martinez is once again waiting for answers.
The execution may have been halted, but for Colleen Slemmer’s mother, the reason she came to Nashville has not changed.
More than thirty years after her daughter’s murder, she is still determined to make sure the story does not become only about the woman convicted of killing her.
She wants people to remember the young woman whose life was taken first.