Tennessee prison system head to resign after failed Christa Pike execution

The head of Tennessee’s prison system is set to resign after the botched execution of Christa Pike earlier this week, Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday. 

Lee said that Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada will step down this month, but did not offer any other specifics. 

Strada said in a statement that he believes “the Department carried out its responsibilities in accordance with the established protocol,” but that “stepping aside is in the best interest” of the state’s residents as an independent review ordered by Lee begins. 

“I believe this review is entirely appropriate and necessary, and I look forward to doing everything I can to help determine exactly what occurred,” Strada said. Strada was named commissioner by Lee in January 2023.

Pike was set to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday, but the process failed twice. Pike’s attorneys said Friday that she is unconscious and intubated in a Nashville-area hospital. She is using a ventilator to breathe and has significant injuries to both arms, her attorneys said. Hospital staff is working to clear the pentobarbital from her body.

Pike’s lawyers said Friday that the Tennessee Department of Correction IV team did not seem to realize that Pike’s IVs were not correctly placed or that her veins had blown, allowing the pentobarbital to enter Pike’s body. 

Her lawyers said in a statement Saturday that Strada’s resignation is “justified, but it does nothing to help Christa now.” 

In a court filing, Pike’s attorneys requested an order requiring the Tennessee Department of Correction to preserve all evidence related to the failed execution attempt. The Tennessee Department of Correction has said it “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”

Pike was set to become the first woman executed in Tennessee since the 1800s after the Supreme Court ruled that her execution could proceed. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of her former classmate, Colleen Slemmer. According to court records, Pike and Slemmer were students at the Job Corps Center in Knoxville when Pike, then 18, tortured and killed her, allegedly over comments Slemmer, 19, had made about her relationship. Pike is now 50. 

In addition to the independent review, Lee has called off the remaining executions scheduled in Tennessee for the rest of the year.