Tennessee prisons chief to resign after failed execution of Christa Pike
publishers 18articles 19first reported 3 Oct, 15:45 UTCdeveloping since 3 Oct · 7 editions
Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada will resign this month after the state’s failed execution of Christa Pike, Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday.
Pike remained alive after officials administered two doses of pentobarbital Wednesday. Her lawyers said she was unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator as of Thursday night while doctors at a Nashville hospital worked to clear the drug from her body. They believe problems with intravenous lines may have caused the drug to enter her tissue rather than her bloodstream. State officials have not explained what went wrong.
Lee ordered an independent review led by former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton and halted further executions. Stanton conducted an earlier review after Tennessee called off an execution in 2022, finding that the state had failed to follow its lethal-injection procedures.
Strada said stepping down was in Tennessee’s best interest while the review proceeds, but maintained that the department followed its established protocol. Pike’s attorneys called his resignation justified while arguing that the failure reflected broader problems in the state’s death-penalty system.
The incident was Tennessee’s second aborted execution since May, when officials stopped the execution of Tony Carruthers after failing to establish a secondary IV line. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
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