Tennessee prisons chief resigns after failed execution of Christa Pike

Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada will step down this month after the failed execution of death row inmate Christa Pike, Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday. Lee said he accepted Strada's resignation and was grateful for his “commitment to ensuring a smooth leadership transition”, adding that the commissioner “served with integrity”. An interim commissioner will be announced at a later date, the governor's office said. [ 1 , 2 , 5 , 8 , 11 ]

In a statement, Strada said he continued to believe the department “carried out its responsibilities in accordance with the established protocol”, but that “stepping aside is in the best interest of Tennesseans as the independent review moves forward”. He called the review “entirely appropriate and necessary” and said he would do everything he could to help determine what occurred. [ 3 , 5 , 8 , 11 ]

Pike received two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital during the Sept. 30 attempt at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville and survived, according to the documents. Her attorneys said in a Friday court filing that she was unconscious, intubated and using a ventilator while hospital staff worked to clear the drug from her body, and said she had significant injuries to both arms. They said the Department of Correction IV team did not appear to realize the IVs were not correctly placed or that her veins had blown, allowing the pentobarbital to enter her body; medical experts cited in one report said the details suggest the IV was not properly connected and the drug may not have gone directly into her bloodstream. The Department of Correction has said it “followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office”. [ 3 , 4 , 8 , 11 ]

Lee ordered an independent review to be led by former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton, who previously found in a review of a different execution that Tennessee had not complied with its own lethal injection process. The governor halted further executions for the rest of the year. Tennessee had also failed in May to execute Tony Carruthers after failing to find a vein, according to one report. [ 1 , 2 , 5 , 7 , 11 ]

Pike's attorneys, Randy Spivey, Kelly Gleason, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen, said the resignation “is justified, but it does nothing to help Christa now”. They called what happened to her “a systemic failure that goes far beyond any one person” and said they hoped the governor's call for a full, independent review would expose problems in the state's entire death penalty system. In a court filing, they asked for an order requiring the department to preserve all evidence related to the attempt. [ 3 , 8 ]

Pike, now 50, was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in a jealous rage in 1995, and she became one of the youngest women sent to death row, according to one report. She was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee since the 1800s after the Supreme Court ruled that her execution could proceed. [ 1 , 3 ]

Strada was appointed commissioner by Lee effective January 2023. He previously served as deputy director at the Arizona Department of Correction, after being director of operations for the private prison operator The GEO Group and 30 years with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and one outlet reported new scrutiny of his prior role during three problem-plagued executions in Arizona. [ 5 , 8 , 11 ]