Nocturnal 
The mother of a woman murdered more than 30 years ago has spoken out after watching her daughter’s killer survive a botched execution attempt.
May Martinez travelled around eight hours from Jacksonville, Florida, to Nashville, Tennessee, to witness Christa Pike’s lethal injection on Wednesday 30 September. But Pike, now 50, survived after being given two doses of the drug pentobarbital at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, and was rushed to hospital still alive.
As first reported by LADbible, Martinez has now hit out at Tennessee authorities over what happened, saying officials simply told victims’ families the process “didn’t work” before Pike was taken away for emergency treatment.
“They went to try to execute her, and she didn’t die,” Martinez said. “They didn’t say anything, and then, all of a sudden, they asked all the victims to leave. And we left. We didn’t know anything until we got up to the office and saw the commissioner. And he said that it didn’t work, that it didn’t work, and she’s on her way to the hospital.”
What went wrong
Pike lost consciousness during the procedure but her heart kept beating, prompting her legal team to file an emergency motion while the execution was still under way. In a statement given to The Tennessean, her lawyers said: “Tonight the State of Tennessee once again failed to carry out a lawful execution. We take no pleasure in being right, but the concerns raised by Ms Pike proved to be true: difficult vein access, blown veins, degraded pentobarbital, no emergency medical care available when things inevitably go wrong, all under a protocol that remains veiled in secrecy.”
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has since ordered a full independent review and suspended all remaining executions in the state for the rest of the year, according to The Sun. It is unclear what will happen to Pike going forward, with doctors reportedly warning she could suffer a brain injury as a result of the ordeal.
The background to the case
Pike was 18 when she and her then-boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, 17, lured 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer into woodland near Knoxville’s Job Corps vocational centre in January 1995, according to court records. Prosecutors said Pike wrongly believed Slemmer was trying to steal Shipp from her.
Slemmer was beaten and cut for around 30 minutes, with a pentagram carved into her body, before being killed with a piece of asphalt. Pike reportedly kept part of Slemmer’s skull as a souvenir. Both Pike and Shipp confessed; Pike was sentenced to death in 1996, while Shipp received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Pike had been due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Martinez has previously told local outlet WBIR that Pike has never reached out to apologise and showed no remorse. Pike, for her part, said in a clemency statement that she was a “mentally ill 18-year-old kid” at the time and that it sickened her to think about what she did.
Where things stand now
With executions paused across Tennessee pending the governor’s review, there is no confirmed timeline for what happens next in Pike’s case. Martinez says she remains furious with state officials over how the night unfolded, and the case is likely to face further legal and political scrutiny in the coming weeks.
