Sitting on a park bench two months after her mother’s killer was executed, Melissa Jenkins felt more at peace about her experience with Tennessee’s criminal justice system than she had in 40 years.
But she felt something else, too.
"I feel kind of guilty," Jenkins said.
Jenkins’ mother, Catherine, was killed in 1985 at a Kingston Springs motel where she worked as a maid. Anthony "Darrell" Hines was convicted and sentenced to death for brutally stabbing Catherine. When Hines was executed in August, Jenkins was there to see it.
Now, Jenkins’ thoughts are with another family. One she doesn’t know, but whose story is tethered to hers through the state’s problematic administration of the death penalty.
On Sept. 30, May Martinez arrived at the Nashville
prison where Tennessee would execute the woman who killed her daughter, Colleen Slemmer, more than 30 years ago. Martinez once told The Tennessean she could never have peace until the state of Tennessee executed Christa Pike.
Pike survived multiple rounds of chemicals meant to stop her heart. It was not the first time Tennessee failed to carry out a lethal injection in 2026. The attempted execution of Tony Carruthers in May was called off after staff could not set the IV lines outlined by the state's official protocol.
Multiple family members of crime victims in other capital cases feel the state should be blamed for the failures, and victim advocates both for and against the death penalty say the botch only enhanced pain, uncertainty and frustration for families who have already waited decades for justice.
Jenkins felt a sense of relief after her mother's killer was put to death. But now, she's wrestling with conflicting feelings. In her opinion, it's not morally right for Pike to be forced to face execution again, after the state tried and failed.
"I have to say they did fulfill their promise to my family," Jenkins said. "And I think that's why I feel kind of guilty, because they kept their promise to us, but they broke it to May Martinez."
Father of murdered girl calls death penalty 'a joke'
Tennessee has executed 17 people since resuming capital punishment in 2000, and the previous 40 years passed without an execution. Texas, the most active death penalty state, in the same period of time has executed more than 400 people. Florida follows with 99 executions since 2000.
In Tennessee, there were no executions between 2001 and 2005, one in 2006, and two each in 2007 and 2009. In 2018, executions were brought back at a quicker pace, and the first person put to death after the lapse was Billy Ray Irick.
Kenny Jeffers was there to see it.
Irick was sentenced to die for the 1985 rape and murder of Jeffers' 7-year-old stepdaughter Paula Dyer. Irick was friends with the family and had lived with them previously. He was babysitting Paula and her brothers when he killed her.
A Knox County jury convicted Irick, and Jeffers was told it would be 10 or 15 years until he would be put to death. But stays of execution, lawsuits and delays dragged the process on for double that time. Each time there was an appeal or court appearance, the details of the case were brought back to the surface for Jeffers, and Paula's story became overshadowed.
"And all that does, it just brings it right back in your face," Jeffers said. "You never get over it."
Irick died by lethal injection on Aug. 9, 2018. Jeffers thought it was too peaceful.
"How do you call that punishment?" Jeffers said. "My daughter went through hell to die."
The execution did not give him closure. "The only way I could see justice for that would be to give him to me," he said.
"It’s a joke," he said about the death penalty.
Jeffers wanted to see Irick put to death but was without a sense of justice afterwards. A family member of another victim in a separate Tennessee case has also gone without a feeling of justice, and it has turned him to activism against the penalty.
Waves of shock, grief, confusion after execution
The family of Daryl Holton's victims didn't have to wait as long for his execution. But not all of them felt a sense of relief afterward.
Holton killed his three sons, Stephen, Brent and Eric, and their half sister Kayla, in 1997 in Shelbyville.
Timothy Holton-Overcast was related to Daryl Holton and grew up in the area, but he was not close with the family. Still, the murders of his extended family members changed his life.
Holton-Overcast said he grew up in a Southern Baptist Church that supported the death penalty. He remembered questioning the process to himself, but he never shared this with anyone else.
"Why is it OK for us to become the thing that we are condemning?" he remembers thinking.
Daryl Holton was put to death on Sept. 12, 2007. And after a period of shock, Holton-Overcast felt grief again. Then he felt confused.
"Why did we just take a life because someone took four lives, when taking their life didn't bring those four lives back?" he said.
Holton-Overcast did not find closure in Daryl Holton’s execution. But he doesn't deny that other family members found closure or justice in the process.
He became a United Methodist preacher and visits Nashville’s death row regularly, usually once a week. He has found his own way to define justice.
"Shouldn't justice be measured by what it restores, not by what it destroys?" Holton-Overcast said.
Some family members of victims in capital crimes cases, like Melissa Jenkins, do feel an increased sense of peace and justice after convicted killers are put to death. When the delays finally ended for Jenkins and Hines was executed, part of the relief was from knowing she would not hear about the case anymore.
"I do feel different," she said. "A lot of it, I think, is because now I don't have to worry about getting a phone call. … That in itself takes a big weight off."
"40 years of that was enough," she said. "I'm glad that's over."
But Jenkins and others are unsettled by what happened to Christa Pike and doubtful of the effectiveness of the Tennessee Department of Correction.
Victim advocates weigh in, cast doubt on effectiveness of justice system
Leaders from advocacy groups both for and against capital punishment said the execution failures over the past year reflect an entire justice system that isn't working for victims and their families.
Verna Wyatt, the founder of Tennessee Voices for Victims, said victims of crime and their families are treated as a second thought in the process, in capital crimes cases and otherwise.
"The system is totally broken," she said. "As the years go by and an execution gets closer, victims are completely forgotten."
Wyatt believes the death penalty should be used in very serious cases, but she said more should be done to prevent those crimes in the first place, including interventions to break the cycles of violence and abuse that beget further crime and victimization.
"If we want to do something, if we want to prevent this kind of violence, if we want to prevent people being created to be monsters, then we have to look at what's going on," she said. "There's 25 years of research that tells us what unresolved trauma does. And yet we turn our backs the other way."
Stacy Rector, founder of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, agreed that the system ends up hurting victims. "This system fails everybody," she said.
Rector is against the death penalty and expressly does not trust the state of Tennessee to handle executions in a safe, transparent and consistent manner.
"I don't like the death penalty. I think it's a failure," she said. "I think it only distracts us from what we should be focusing on, which is supporting victims and violence prevention."
Feeling for Colleen Slemmer’s family, other victims’ families call for change
Because they felt peace when their loved one's killer was executed, some people want to see the death penalty continue for other families. But they don't see a way forward for lethal injection in Tennessee.
Staci Wooten lost her sister, Traci Crozier, in 1991. It took 28 years for Crozier's killer to be put to death. Lee Hall was executed by electric chair on Dec. 5, 2019.
"When we finally got to see him executed, it was justice," Wooten said.
Now, Wooten is thinking about the family of Colleen Slemmer as the fallout continues from the failed execution of Christa Pike.
"That had to be devastating for the family," Wooten said. "It was kind of a failure on the state of Tennessee."
Wooten decried that taxpayers are on the hook for Pike's hospital stay. She also criticized what could end up being a lengthy review process, costing more public money. She said the electric chair could be a more viable option than lethal injection because it hasn't resulted in prolonged suffering for the families of victims.
"It worked," she said about the electric chair. "It was finally some kind of justice. We waited that long for some justice, and it was carried out. Now these parents are sitting there, and no justice has been served."
Jenkins also mourns for the family of Colleen Slemmer. It might have been their only chance to see Pike's death sentence carried out, she said, and it has been ruined.
"I don't see how they can morally and ethically try to execute her again," Jenkins said about the state of Tennessee. "You tried twice and you didn't succeed. To me, that's the definition of cruel and unusual punishment."
She, too, thinks a change is needed.
"I honestly think at this point, lethal injection needs to be taken off the table, and they need to come up with something that's going to work," she said. "There's got to be a better way."
Molly Davis covers growth and development in Nashville and assists with special projects. You can email her with comments, questions and tips at mmdavis@tennessean.com. Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him with questions, tips or story ideas at emealins@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Crime victims blame state for failed Christa Pike execution, call for change
