Tennessee Prisons Chief Resigns Following Botched Execution
Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada will step down this month after the state’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike.
Frank Strada, the commissioner of Tennessee’s Department of Correction, will resign this month, following the state’s failed attempt to execute inmate Christa Pike. The announcement was made Saturday by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.
Strada stated that his stepping aside is in the best interests of the state as an independent review is conducted to determine the cause of the botched execution, which occurred on Wednesday. Pike’s attorneys reported that she remained unconscious in a hospital on a ventilator after the execution attempt, and hospital staff were working to save her life. Her lawyers indicated that the two doses of the execution drug, pentobarbital, may have entered her body’s tissue rather than her bloodstream, potentially due to issues with IV line placement.
Pike was convicted of the 1995 torture and murder of a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, when she was 18 years old. She later became one of the youngest women sentenced to death row in Tennessee.