On Wednesday, the state of Tennessee botched the execution of convicted first-degree murderer Christa Pike. After several attempts to administer an injection of lethal pentobarbital failed, Pike was taken to a hospital, where she remains unconscious and on a ventilator.

The attempted execution was delayed for more than eight hours “as the U.S. Supreme Court considered, and ultimately overturned, a federal appeals court ruling to halt her lethal injection.”

Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in over 200 years. She was convicted in 1996 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer the previous year “in a jealous rage.”  

Both Pike and Slemmer were Job Corps workers. Her reason for “beating, torturing, and killing” Slemmer in a remote area of the University of Tennessee Agricultural campus was that she “just felt mean that day.” Pike and her boyfriend “slashed Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt.” The killers also carved “a satanic symbol” into her body.

Attending the planned execution in Nashville was May Martinez, the victim’s mother, who traveled from her Florida home. Ms. Martinez was angry that the execution was botched, saying that she “broke down in tears.” According to Ms. Martinez, Pike was “on the table, talking, still laughing.” After the failed execution, witnesses reported hearing Pike “breathing and snoring very loudly.”

None of this was fair to Colleen Slemmer's family. Ms. Martinez rightly believes that she is owed “a big apology” from the state of Tennessee. Sadly, no one has apologized to her for this embarrassing failure. She was only told that authorities did not know what they were “doing with her (Pike)”........

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