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'I didn't get justice': Mother of Christa Pike's victim describes failed execution

Christa Pike, pictured in 2012, is receiving life-saving treatment after surviving two lethal injections. Imagn Images via Reuters Connect The mother of the woman killed by Christa Pike said she was left without justice after Tennessee's failed attempt to carry out the execution , criticizing the state's handling of a procedure that left the death row prisoner hospitalized in critical condition. I didn't get justice for my daughter, May Martinez, whose daughter Colleen Slemmer was killed in 1995, told the Associated Press on Thursday. Martinez traveled to Nashville to witness the execution Wednesday. Instead, she watched as officials administered two doses of the state's execution drug pentobarbital without killing Pike. I watched the whole thing. She was awake, she said. 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. The inmate is receiving life-saving medical care, according to her legal team, who have asked Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to commute her sentence. In a separate interview with NBC News , Martinez described the failed execution attempt as a mess and said Pike never expressed remorse during the attempted execution. Not nothing about what happened, you know, to Colleen, Martinez told NBC News. May Martinez, left, mother of murder victim Colleen Slemmer, outside the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. AP Photo/George Walker IV Martinez also criticized officials' communication with Slemmer's family during the execution attempt. 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 her message to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and the state's attorney general was, Martinez replied, They f***** up. Slemmer's stepfather, Raul Martinez Jr., also described what he witnessed as the execution unfolded. She just lay there, he told People of Pike's reaction after the first dose of pentobarbital was administered. She moved her toes a lot. He said the curtain around the execution chamber closed about 15 minutes later. 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 was administered, he said. Even with the curtain closed, he said he could hear the sounds of her snoring or gurgling. Why was Christa Pike scheduled to be executed? Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 after being convicted of first-degree murder of Colleen Slemmer 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 Colleen's throat multiple times and crushed her skull with a piece of asphalt. Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Pike spent nearly three decades trying to overturn 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 been given greater weight. By June 2020, Pike had exhausted the three main levels of review of her sentence 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 her 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. I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I'd done, Pike said in a statement included in her clemency petition. 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. This article originally appeared on Yahoo News at https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/article/how-the-family-of-christa-pikes-victim-colleen-slemmer-reacted-to-failed-execution-its-a-mess-104309114.html