For more than 30 years, May Martinez waited for the day Tennessee would execute the woman convicted of murdering her 19-year-old daughter.

She traveled from Florida to Nashville.

She carried a photograph of Colleen Slemmer into the witness area.

And on Wednesday night, she watched as the execution of Christa Gail Pike went badly wrong.

“It was a mess,” Martinez said afterward.

Pike, 50, survived two doses of pentobarbital during Tennessee’s attempt to put her to death at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

She was later transported by ambulance to a hospital, where her attorneys said she remained in critical condition and was receiving life-saving medical treatment.

For Martinez, the failed execution created another painful chapter in a case that has defined much of her life.

“I didn’t get justice for my daughter,” she said after witnessing the procedure.

Martinez and her husband, Raul, had driven roughly 11 hours from Florida to Tennessee to be present.

She said she kept her eyes fixed on Pike throughout the execution attempt.

“I did not take my eyes off her,” Martinez told People.

The evening unfolded in ways neither the victim’s family nor the other witnesses had expected.

Tennessee’s protocol uses the barbiturate pentobarbital.

If the first administration does not result in death, the protocol allows a second dose.

Pike received both.

She remained alive.

Witnesses said Pike spoke during parts of the procedure and complained about pain in her arm.

At other points, she appeared to lose consciousness or become heavily sedated.

She could later be heard snoring or breathing loudly even after the execution team had administered the second dose.

The curtains separating the witness room from the execution chamber were closed more than once.

Media witnesses were temporarily removed.

Behind the scenes, lawyers were filing emergency motions as concern grew that Pike was still alive despite receiving the maximum drug sequence permitted under Tennessee’s protocol.

Eventually, emergency medical treatment began.

Pike was removed from the prison and taken to a hospital.

The Tennessee Department of Correction later said it had followed every step of the state’s legally approved protocol.

“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective,” the department said.

It added that the rules did not authorize officials to go beyond the procedures already carried out.

That explanation did little to satisfy Martinez.

Asked what she would say to Tennessee officials responsible for the process, she gave a blunt answer.

“They f—– up,” she told NBC News, according to multiple reports.

Martinez also said she was frustrated by how little information the witnesses initially received.

She said they did not learn that Pike had survived until after they had left the witness area and were informed by prison officials that the execution had failed and Pike was being taken to a hospital.

The lack of immediate answers added to what Martinez described as an already chaotic experience.

Her anger is rooted in a crime that happened more than three decades ago.

Pike was 18 when she participated in the 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.

The two young women were enrolled in a Job Corps program.

Prosecutors said Pike believed Slemmer was trying to interfere in her relationship with her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp.

Slemmer was lured to an isolated area and killed in a prolonged and brutal attack.

Pike was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy and sentenced to death in 1996.

Martinez has spent decades speaking publicly about her daughter rather than allowing the case to be remembered only through the violence of her death.

She has described Colleen as a teenager who loved computers, old video games and spending time at the roller rink.

“I am her voice,” Martinez has said.

“Someone has to speak for Colleen.”

That sense of responsibility was one reason she chose to attend the execution.

She wanted to witness the conclusion of the legal process herself.

Instead, she watched Pike survive.

Martinez also disputes Pike’s expressions of remorse.

Pike has publicly said she regrets killing Slemmer and has spoken about the pain she caused her victim’s family.

But Martinez told People that she does not believe Pike has demonstrated genuine remorse over the past three decades and said Pike never personally apologized to her family.

That difference in perspective has remained central to the emotional debate surrounding the case.

Pike’s attorneys have pointed to her abusive childhood, severe trauma, mental-health history and young age at the time of the murder as reasons her sentence should have been reduced to life imprisonment.

Martinez has consistently supported carrying out the death sentence.

The failed execution has now shifted attention from that debate to Tennessee’s ability to conduct lethal injections reliably.

Gov. Bill Lee called the incident “deeply disturbing” and ordered a comprehensive third-party review.

He also stopped Tennessee’s remaining scheduled execution for the rest of 2026.

It was not the state’s first execution failure this year.

In May, officials abandoned the scheduled execution of Tony Carruthers after struggling to establish the required IV access.

The Pike case was even more extraordinary because the execution drugs were actually administered.

Death-penalty experts have described it as an apparently unprecedented modern case of a prisoner surviving after receiving the full drug protocol intended to cause death.

Questions remain about exactly why the drugs failed.

Pike had previously warned that medical personnel often struggled to access her veins.

Her attorneys also pointed to a blood disorder that they argued could complicate lethal injection.

Dr. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiology and intensive-care specialist retained by the defense, has said one possibility is that Pike did not receive a sufficiently high concentration of pentobarbital in her bloodstream to cause fatal respiratory and cardiovascular failure.

The independent investigation ordered by Lee is expected to examine those possibilities.

For Martinez, however, the technical explanations come after something much more personal.

She went to Riverbend expecting the end of a 31-year legal process.

She sat behind glass holding the memory of her daughter.

She watched the state administer the lethal drug.

Then she watched Pike remain alive.

More than three decades after Colleen Slemmer was murdered, Martinez says the ending she had prepared herself for never arrived.

“It was a mess,” she said.

And for a mother who had waited 30 years for that night, the failed execution left the case feeling unfinished all over again.