After Tennessee’s Failed Execution of Christa Pike, Victim’s Mother Says: ‘I Didn’t Get Justice’

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The mother of Colleen Slemmer says Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike has left her without the justice she waited nearly three decades to see, deepening her anger at a state she says bungled the lethal injection from start to finish.

“I didn't get justice for my daughter,” May Martinez told The Associated Press on Thursday, a day after she traveled to Nashville to witness Pike’s scheduled execution. Instead, she watched prison officials administer two doses of pentobarbital—the state’s execution drug—without killing Pike.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for Slemmer’s 1995 murder, was later hospitalized in critical condition and is receiving life-saving medical care, according to her legal team. Her attorneys have asked Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence.

Martinez described watching Pike remain conscious through the procedure. “I watched the whole thing. She was awake,” she told the AP. “She was moving her head, moving her feet. She was trying to sit up. Didn't work the first time they gave her a shot. It didn't work the second time, so she's in the hospital and alive.”

In a separate interview with NBC News, Martinez called the failed attempt “a mess” and said Pike showed no remorse toward Slemmer’s family. “Not nothing… about what happened, you know, to Colleen,” she said.

Martinez also faulted the state for how it communicated with victims’ relatives inside the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. She said officials gave no explanation before asking the family to leave the witness area.

“They didn't say anything, and then, all of a sudden, they asked all the victims to leave. And we left,” she said. “We didn't know anything until we got up to the office and saw the commissioner. And he said that it didn't work… and she's on her way to the hospital.”

Asked what message she had for Gov. Lee and Tennessee’s attorney general, Martinez replied bluntly: “They f***** up.”

Slemmer’s stepfather, Raul Martinez Jr., described a similar scene. He told People that after the first dose of pentobarbital, Pike “just lay there” and “moved her toes a lot.” About 15 minutes later, the curtain around the execution chamber closed, he said. After several minutes, witnesses were told Pike would receive another dose.

“They opened another bag, and she was still picking up her head and moving around,” he said.

The curtain closed again about 10 to 15 minutes after the second dose, Raul Martinez Jr. said. Even with the curtain drawn, he said he could “hear the sounds of her snoring or gurgling.”

A murder that shocked Tennessee

Pike was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Colleen Slemmer and sentenced to death in 1996. The killing occurred the previous year on the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus.

According to legal documents filed with the Supreme Court, Pike “tortured, and killed Colleen Slemmer” on Jan. 12, 1995, because Pike “just felt mean that day.” Pike is reported to have cut Slemmer’s throat multiple times and crushed her skull with a piece of asphalt.

Had the execution been carried out, Pike would have become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.

Pike spent nearly three decades challenging her conviction and death sentence. Her lawyers argued that the jury that sentenced her to death had not been given a full picture of her traumatic childhood and mental health problems, and that her age at the time of the murder should have carried greater weight.

By June 2020, Pike had exhausted the three main levels of review after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear her case. The Tennessee Supreme Court later set her execution for Sept. 30, 2026.

About an hour before the scheduled execution, a federal appeals court granted a temporary stay to give judges time to consider the issue. Tennessee appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that Pike was attempting to revive a claim that had already been rejected.

The Supreme Court lifted the stay later that day, allowing the execution to proceed. The majority did not explain its reasoning. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying the appeals court should have been given time to consider Pike’s claim.

Pike’s own words

In a statement included in her clemency petition, Pike described herself as a mentally ill teenager at the time of the murder. “I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I'd done,” she said. “Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone's child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime.”

Pike was also convicted of attempted first-degree murder after trying to strangle fellow inmate Patricia Jones in 2001. According to legal documents filed with the Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee, Pike said in a phone call after the incident, “I betcha if she gets near me, I'm gonna do it again. I'm gonna succeed this damn time.”

The failed execution is likely to intensify scrutiny of Tennessee’s death penalty protocol and the broader debate over lethal injection, particularly as states confront legal challenges and questions about reliability. For Slemmer’s family, however, the focus remains on a wound that was reopened rather than closed.

Martinez said she came to Nashville expecting a measure of finality. Instead, she left with Pike still alive and the case once again in limbo.