Hello, allhi, man, can can you hear me?

I can?

Okay?

Goo ahead.

Thanks for agreeing to talk to me.

I'm recording this okay, Yes, ma'am.

This is a phone call between Beth Carris and May Martinez, Colleen Slammer's mother.

So what I want to do is talk to you about the news, the most recent news I have.

So call Monday last week, send the victims.

Sheriff and at Nashville.

And what were you told.

That they set a date for Christopher September thirtieth, She's as in the twenty sixth.

On Tuesday September thirtieth, twenty twenty five, just before the fourth episode of this podcast aired, Krista Pike received an execution date.

It was set for exactly one year later.

Were you surprised?

How did you feel?

I very shocked?

Do you plan to go?

Yes, ma'am.

Kelleen helleens picture of Winga.

Well, if you could speak to her would today?

Would you say anything?

She doesn't deserve that, she doesn't deserve me to say one word to her?

Yet?

Was she done and couldn't face thing, couldn't even say sorry?

Yeah?

I pray did it happen?

I really do, because I think I can find Priti to rest.

This isn't the first time that Krista has received an execution date.

Her first was set on the day in March nineteen ninety six when she was sentenced.

It was set for January twelfth, nineteen ninety seven, the two year anniversary of Colleen Slimmer's murder.

That was suspended while Christa appealed her sentence.

Christa received a second execution date at her request for August nineteen, two thousand two, though that was later stayed when Christa resumed her appeals.

In twenty twenty, as Christa was coming to the end of her appeals process, the state Attorney General asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to again set a date.

Following that, Christa's lawyers filed an application for a certificate of commutation.

Then Tennessee put a hold on all executions for COVID.

They were then placed on an indefinite hold in twenty twenty two when Tennessee issued a broader moratorium on executions.

That moratorium was linked to a series of botched lethal injections where inmates were observed writhing in pain in their final moments under pressure Tennessee announced it would update its lethal injection protocols.

That moratorium ended in December twenty twenty four, when it was announced that Tennessee was prepared to reset start executions.

We were told that executing Christa would likely be a priority, but the news was a gut punch for everyone.

My first reaction, I think, was just shock, like something had taken the breath out of me, very literally, and I kind of hit my knees.

Christa's lawyers, Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason, recorded this interview with Christa using questions we sent shortly after she learned that Tennessee had given her a date.

I think I maniacally screened ob tnities for a few minutes and then immediately started worrying.

About how I was gonna.

Tell my mom this.

All the bad things just hit me at once, and the only thing I could think, and all the dust settled in my head, was that a year seems like a really long time until all of a sudden, a year is not a long time at all anymore when it's all you have left right now.

Halloween's coming up, and that's my favorite holiday, and I'm thinking, well, this is the last Halloween I ever have, you know, and so like what do you do to make that count?

And then you know, like it's like a black cloud looming over everything.

Were you?

Were you afraid?

I'm I'm more afraid.

I think of all of the I don't know that I'm afraid to.

Die, but I'm more afraid of like all the.

The build up to it, all the things that they put you through here before they kill you.

And that's probably worse for me than actually take in my life.

Is there anything you want people to know about you?

Or about your circumstances or about the system that has held you for the last thirty years?

I touch an odd question for someone to ask you, Is there anything that you want people to know about you?

And it's like, how do I give like a summary judgment of myself to everyone who doesn't know me, to explain to them, like what type of person I am or what I can be or want to be, or who I am or what I am to like make you not want.

To kill me.

I'm Sarah Trelevin and this is Unrestorable Season two.

Proof of Life, an original podcast from Anonymous content and iHeartRadio.

Hi everybody, Good morning, a little over a.

Week after Christa's execution date was announced, Beth and I met over zoom with three of Christa's attorneys.

It's awfully cruel.

Not that I want the time to be shortened, but it's awfully cruel to tell someone a whole year in advance to start the countdown.

This is Steve Ferrell, one of Christa's Knoxville based attorneys.

I heard a few hours later when I checked my work email that night.

Kelly Gleeson was on vacation and celebrating her birthday when she got the news.

Did not anticipate this coming, cried some that night.

You know.

Then you wake up the next morning, sort of dust yourself off and play in the fight, you know, play in the next steps.

I, like Steve, had been trying to wrap my head around the cruelty of it.

They come to her on September thirtieth, twenty twenty five, and say, I'm going to kill you precisely a year from now at ten am, and I have a blueprint for how I'm going to do that, depending upon whether I'm going to strap you to ajourney and inject you with poison until you're dead, or strap you to an electrified chair and run high current electricity through you until you are dead.

Randy Spivey was responsible for breaking the news to Christa.

So we have had a practice over the last couple of weeks of Christa calling in to listen to the podcast because she doesn't have access to it.

Another way, Randy is talking about this podcast which Christa has been listening to over the phone with her lawyers or members of their staff as each new episode drops.

And so she called, and she clearly had not heard.

I anticipated that she would have heard because sometimes in the past there have been officers out at the prison that have taken some joy and telling Christa news like that.

That was not the case this time.

There's no one had told her.

So she was in great mood, like she was very chipper.

And I told her that, like I needed to tell her something.

And I told her that the court had had set her a date.

And I mean it was it was devastating, like I don't I don't know exactly how to explain it, Like she cried.

She was very, very upset.

You could hear people in the back of the phone call coming to her door saying Chris stry okay, Chris of What's going on Chris Sterio, Okay, I had not heard Crystal like that in a long time.

But the thing I can most closely equate it to her, there's those audio clips of either when she was sentenced to death or you know, just when she's really really young and she's crying like that.

That was the same voice, like it was, it sounded, it was.

It was awful, And we talked for a while.

And what was it was interesting to me is how quickly she turned to being worried about other people, Like it happened real fast.

Like one of the first things she says was, I don't know how I'm going to tell my mom this.

Her mom had some health struggles at the moment, and like really really difficult health struggles, and so she wasn't sure how she was going to tell her mom.

She was she was mad that they ruined Kelly's vacation and birthday, Like, she was really worried and upset about Kelly and wanted to talk to her as soon as possible.

She was worried about Steve, and.

It was awful.

Do you feel that in your engagement with Christa, Like, are you simultaneously trying to encourage her that you are continuing this fight, that it's not over, but while also trying to prepare her that this outcome may in fact happen.

So my first day back in the office was a few days ago, and so Krista called for me in the morning and she wanted to know where my head was at.

And she has a great sense of humor, and so I approached the situation with humor, you know, I told her I'm sorry to hear it.

She was upset about me hearing it, you know, on vacation right before my birthday.

And so I told her that September thirtieth, twenty twenty six is the day before my sixtieth birthday.

And so We're just going to have to win this, because I'm not doing that.

When you're talking to Christa in those terms and you're saying, you know, we're going to keep working on this, We're going to beat it, Like, how do you actually feel Do you feel like it's possible or do you feel like the deck is stacked against against you and against Christa.

I feel like the deck is stacked against us.

We have a governor who has never grate a clemency but I feel like Christa's situation is highly unusual.

She would be the first woman killed by Tennessee in over two hundred years, which is crazy.

She was eighteen at the time.

She did have a severe mental illness that was undiagnosed at the time and not explained to the jury who made the sun the same decision.

There have been failures in the appellate process.

I feel like we have a very very strong clemency case, and I'd like to feel that the citizens of Tennessee and their elected governor don't have the stomach to kill someone under these circles stances.

So what is the status of that petition for clemency?

Yeah, I mean it's in our office and with Steve and we are we're drafting it and preparing it and putting together all the pieces of it.

So we have an execution date now.

But I think there are two parts to this.

Like one, governors don't want it too soon, but we also don't want it too soon because the world in the law is in constant flux and there may be something else that comes to bear on Chris's situation that's important to include in a petition for clemency or that could conceivably put us back in court in some way.

From the time you filed the clemency petition whenever that is, does the governor have a deadline or can he grant or deny it right up until the time of execution.

The decision can come fairly close to the actual event, and different states do it a little differently.

In Tennessee, so far, there will be an official decision one way or the other.

Do you foresee a potential possible delay or resent a new date being set because of a challenge to the lethal protocol that's in place now?

There are some challenges right now that are pending.

Starting around twenty eleven, we began to see a number of problems associated with the use of lethal injection.

There were a number of botched executions.

This is Robin Mayer, a lawyer and the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that provides data and analysis.

First, of all, the drugs that were traditionally used in a three drug protocol for lethal injection.

Some of those drugs became unavailable.

They were not being manufactured in the United States, and a number of pharmaceutical companies objected to their use in execution, and so states began experimenting.

They began experimenting with different drugs, with different combinations of drugs, many of which had never been tested before.

Robin says that what happened next was awful and entirely predictable.

We saw botched executions.

We saw prisoners writhing in pain and calling out audibly looking to be experiencing extreme distress and suffering, and that was really awful to witness.

Instead of dealing with the problems related to the underlying protocols, Robin says that many states simply retreated into secrecy, limiting the information available to the public, media and even defense counsel.

Many states drew the curtains shift and said we're not going to tell you.

We're not going to tell you at all what we're doing or how we're doing it.

And they said that this was partly because they wanted to be able to find the sources of drugs without fear that those drug manufacturers would be harassed or intimidated.

But there's really been no proof at all that that's ever happened.

We saw again continued experimentation with different drugs and combinations, and now we've seen some states pivoting to other forms of execution, including older forms of execution such as the electric chair and the firing squad.

According to Robin, the United States Supreme Court has granted states a wide berth declining to interfere in execution methods and protocols.

They have decided on a legal standard that is so unattainably high that it is impossible for anyone to achieve.

So where we used to be was in a conversation about what is cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment.

But now we have a standard that again is so very high and out of reach that those legal claims are largely futile.

The United States Supreme Court won't look at those cases and has said very clearly, it's not our business.

And I think that has emboldened some state officials to take greater risks.

After a two year moratorium, Tennessee abandoned its problematic three drug protocol and reverted to a single drug, pentobarbital.

A legal challenge file just months after the moratorium was lifted in December twenty twenty four argues that the use of a single drug carries a high risk of tortuous death.

Also, like other states, the storage and testing of the lethal injection drug in Tennessee is now cloaked in secrecy, despite the state's promise of complete transparency.

In July, Byron Black, on death row for almost forty years for the murders of his girlfriend and her two young daughters, was executed after decades of efforts to have his sentence commuted.

At sixty eight.

Black's lawyers argued that he had an IQ below seventy, He had dementia, plus a host of other medical concerns, including a pacemaker.

Amidst concerns that Black's pacemaker would attempt to shock him back to life at the very moment the state was trying to kill him, a legal battle kicked off over its removal.

Ultimately, the state declined to allow a local hospital to remove the pacemaker prior to execution by lethal injection.

By every account we've heard that mister Black suffered pain and suffering during his execution.

It also emphasizes the importance of having media witnesses in the chamber, independent witnesses who can report on their observations of the the anomalies that so often occur during these executions.

If we simply listen to the state officials, we would have a very different narrative.

They often tell us nothing went wrong at all.

Following Black's execution, his lawyer, Kelly Henry, who works in the same Nashville office as Kelly Gleeson and Randy Spivey, released a statement.

It reads, in part, today, the State of Tennessee killed a gentle kind, fragile, intellectually disabled man in violation of the laws of our country, simply because they could.

No one in a position of power, certainly not the courts, was willing to stop them.

And if you think that what happened is just about one man, you are wrong.

We are witnessing the erosion of the rule of law and every principle of human decency on which this country was founded.

Today it is Byron.

Tomorrow it will be someone you care about.

The people who made this happen are not telling the public the true They should feel shame, but they seem incapable.

May God have mercy on their souls.

I know that he is mercy for Byron.

Mister Black's attorney, who did witness the executioner herself, has announced that they did get the preliminary results from the pacemaker, and it wasn't the pacemaker that was the problem, which means that all of the rest of folks who are set for executions should be worried that the current protocol does not work.

And I would not be surprised if it turned out it was pulmonary edema that we know to be caused by the way that they kill people here in Tennessee that caused him to have that pain for much money, he was conscious and in pain very clearly, for much longer than the Attorney General told the court that he would be.

In addition to drug makers, medical experts also declined to participate in executions.

Medical professionals take the hippocratic oath to do no harm, and clearly this would violate that oath.

Okay, I have some questions about sort of what this date triggers now in terms of process for Christa, has she picked a method of execution.

That part of the process happens thirty days out.

And how do you, knowing everything you know about these methods available to her, how do you counsel her in that matter?

I would say with lots of truthful information.

It's another very cruel part of the process.

We say Okay, here are these different awful things that you can do.

Which awful thing do you choose?

Krista will largely live as she has been until two weeks before her scheduled execution.

At that point she will enter a period known as deathwatch.

That period of solitary confinement used to last set two hours.

Under the new protocols, it has been extended to fourteen days.

Now.

They're removed from their friends fourteen days beforehand, where there's the guard station literally keeping a log of every single thing that person does.

That person has allowed one hour out on a wreckage by themselves only, and then they're just monitored twenty four to seven.

And there are all these things in the protocol about the kind of documentation that the guards watching have to keep, and the security implements like handcuffs, change that kind of thing.

But it's very unclear to me whether Christy would just remain as isolated as she currently is and they would just remove the two women who are with her right now or whatever.

Today happens to be.

Any idea why they expanded the death watch period from seventy two hours to fourteen days.

They simply say, this is the way we're doing it the right to do it that way because of the state.

It seems so punitive.

I mean, if there's no real reason for it, why not let them have some time together, you know, till the last day or so.

I don't understand.

I mean, the purpose of death watch, for the most part is to ensure that the person doesn't kill themselves before you can kill them.

And it would seem to me that this expanded death watch essentially makes it more likely that a person will want to kill themselves before you can kill them, while you're trying to keep them from killing themselves before you can kill them.

And like the absurdity and strangeness of the whole thing, we'll really mess with your head.

Taking this person out of human interactions, sort of labeling them as a dead person while they're still actually living, is all part of that.

The cruelty of that process is this is not a real human being, so we can take him or her out of human society, what little society we may have allowed them over the past however many years, and we're going to put them very literally in a cage to be watched like an animal, and then we'll put them down.

I know, obviously, President Trump has made no secret of his desire to execute aggressively.

So where do you see Where do you see this moment of time in terms of the state of Tennessee and the people you represent on death Row?

I feel like this is a weird time sitting in Tennessee.

It does feel like the machinery of death, if you will, is ramping up and we are executing more and more people.

Along with Christa, three other death row inmates had their dates announced on the same day.

And what's weird about that to me is like, that's at the political top level of things, but we're not seeing more capital convictions and death sentences in the same way.

It seems like the people of Tennessee.

And that may be wrong about this, but it's something that gives me hope.

The people of Tennessee at a minimum, find it distasteful and are certainly more judicious about this than I think they have been in a long time.

That does not appear to be something that courts or politicians are particularly interested in.

Before twenty eighteen, there would typically be at least one, sometimes more death sentances issued every year.

After twenty eighteen.

Between twenty eighteen and this year, there have only been two descenances issued, and so you do see the trend of citizens not returning it.

I mean, there have been cases in the last year or two where there were triple and quadruple homicides that settled for less death and didn't even go to trial.

And then when cases are taken to trial, jurors are rejecting the death penalty.

But this is a dark time.

Part of the reluctance of prosecutors to ask for a death sentence is a growing reluctance of jurors to agree.

Concerns about systemic issues and the equitable application of justice, including the potential to execute someone innocent, have driven support for the death penalty to five decade lows, especially among younger Americans.

Public support for the death penalty right now is barely over majority, so around fifty three percent of Americans will generally say they support the death penalty.

I think those numbers are a bit misleading, because when you start asking different questions and more specific questions, you often find that people have grave reservations about use of the death penalty, particularly when it's used against young people.

For example, we know now that the brains of young people people not just under the age of eighteen, but nineteen twenty twenty one are not fully developed, and so that has implications for how culpable they are for the crimes they may commit at those ages.

So I think people are getting uncomfortable with the idea of sentencing to death young people.

They're uncomfortable with the way that mental illness and intellectual disability and brain damage affects behavior and affects the ability of people to conform their behavior to the requirements of the law.

And we're seeing that reluctance translated into the number of new death sentences around the country.

You know, at one point it's hard to believe, but we had well over three hundred death sentences in a single year.

That was before the turn of the century.

Last year, we had twenty six new death sentences and we're on track to do about the same for this year.

But that is markedly different from where we were just twenty five years ago, and that I think is a reflection of the concerns that the public have about use of the death penalty, the many ways that we get it wrong, and their doubts about whether they can trust a system that gets it wrong so often and yet requires such a tremendous investment of resources.

Very few countries, relatively speaking, especially countries that have Western industrialized democracies, have the death penalty.

I almost no one has the death penalty.

This is Sandra Babcock, a law professor at Cornell University, an expert in the death penalty.

I mean, frankly, it's not just Western industrialized democracies.

I mean we're increasingly one of a tiny handful of countries that continues to execute people.

And our brothers and sisters in that, you know, in that category of countries that are imposing the death penalty are China, Iran, Iraq, you know, Yemen, Saudi Arabia.

These are not countries with which we typically associate ourselves when it comes to respect for human rights.

European countries, the vast majority of Latin American countries, the great majority of African states do not have the death penalty, and don't even have life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, which is considered to be an inhumane punishment as well.

So our system is really at the very extreme, very punitive end of responses to violent crime.

And there are many other countries that have systems that are focused much more on rehabilitation than ours is, and who have lower rates of violent crime in their societies.

Do you get the sense in talking to Christa right now, like how is she doing with just the day to day emotions of life, Like how is she doing getting up in the morning and going for meals and engaging with other people and knowing that she's staring this down.

I know we need to monitor Krista very carefully because what's unfolding on a daily basis for her right now in her interactions are people are asking her, what are you going to pick for your last meal?

What are your last words going to be?

You have an opportunity here that so few people get, which is to say something very profound before you leave this earth.

And what are you going to say?

And Christa's like, that's a lot of pressure.

I don't know what I'm supposed to say.

And so I told her again, We're just going to have to win, so you don't have to go through the stress of trying to come up with something.

Yeah, Krista, if Steve and Randy and I and the rest of your team are successful, you'll be looking at is living the rest of your life inside prison.

What does that look like to you?

What would you do with the time that you have.

Kelly Gleason recorded this interview with Krista on Our Behalf before she got her execution date.

If I have my sentence overturn, that would mean I would be living on the regular compound, which would mean I could get a good job.

I could get a roommate, which would be so weird for me, but I would have a hopefully a permanent roommate, someone stable that I could live with and just try to function with.

Get some kind of normal life going in here for myself, maybe get in classes.

I would like to get something started to help some of the younger women that come in here that have maybe been through some of the things that I've been through in my life, to keep them from coming back.

Looking back when you were a kid, what kind of help did you need that you didn't get.

Well.

I feel like as a child, this is hard.

I think anyone recognizing when I was young doing something about me being sexually abused.

I think people acknowledging me.

Paying attention to me, nurturing me, guiding me, maybe realizing that I didn't long the same way as other children.

And doing something too, I don't know, just just nurturing any talent that I had, any gift, that I had, any bright spot in me, you know, maybe recognizing that I had a bipolar disorder instead of just labeling at something else, and maybe if I were treated for.

That earlier than waiting until I was incarcerated.

There are so many things that could have been different.

From so many years prior to.

This happening, that could have sent me down a different.

Road in this case.

What do you think justice for Colleen looks like?

I don't know what justice for Colleen looks like.

There's nothing that I can do.

There's nothing I can say.

There's nothing anyone can do to bring her back.

There's nothing anyone can do to take May's pain away, or anyone else in her family or any of her friends, or you know, anyone who cares for her, anyone who needs to feel vindicated on her behalf.

There's nothing anyone can do to bring her back.

So I don't know what this for her looks like.

But I can you know, all I can do on my part is.

Try to, you know, the.

Best person I can be today.

I can.

I can try to be hopeful now I can, you know, try to talk to people in here now that I see going down the path that I was going down when I was young.

I can try to be a good person now.

I can try to be a better person tomorrow than I am today.

And you know, I don't know what that looks like.

This final episode was recorded on October sixteenth, twenty twenty five.

Christa's team was still working on her clemency petition to present to Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Lee, who faces reelection next year, just a month after Christa is due to be executed.

Krista had yet to formally choose whether she would like to die by lethal injection or electric chair.

She had started to think about any final remarks she would like to make.

Do you think it's possible that you would ever get to a point in your life where you no longer deserve to be punished?

No matter how long I'm alive, I'll always be punished for this, whether I'm on this row, whether I have a life studs, whether I were to walk out the gates to this prison.

Because I know what I did, I know what I've done to my family, to my victim, to my victim's family.

I'll live with that for the rest of my life, and I have an understanding of the gravity of that now.

I'll punish myself for that for the rest.

Of my life.

Okay, I'll just stop recording and unless there's anything more you want.

To say, I don't know.

I think that's it.

Okay, I'm going to stop recording then.

Unrestorable is executive produced and hosted by Me, Sarah Chulevin, and Beth Carris, mixing and sound design by Residia for Anonymous Content.

Jessica Grimshaw is our executive producer, Jennifer Sears is our executive in charge of production, and Nicole Prank is our legal counsel.

For iHeart executive producer Christina Everett and supervising producer Abu Zafar