Tennessee’s prisons chief will step down this month following the failed execution of death-row inmate Christa Pike, after two doses of the lethal-injection drug pentobarbital failed to kill her.
Governor Bill Lee announced on Saturday that Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction, had offered his resignation. The move comes as an independent review examines what happened during the execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday, September 30.
Mr Strada said leaving was “in the best interest of Tennesseans” while the investigation proceeds. He added that he believed the department had acted in accordance with the established protocol and would co-operate fully with the review.
“I believe this review is entirely appropriate and necessary, and I look forward to doing everything I can to help determine exactly what occurred,” he said.
Mr Lee said Mr Strada had served “with integrity” and praised his decision to put the interests of Tennessee first. An interim commissioner will be appointed at a later date.
Investigation into Christa Pike execution
Pike, 50, was taken to hospital after the execution attempt and was unconscious and on a ventilator, according to her lawyers. Medical staff were working to save her life and trying to clear the effects of the two doses of pentobarbital, they said.
Her legal team believes the intravenous lines were incorrectly positioned or that her veins had collapsed, causing the drug to enter tissue rather than the bloodstream. The claim has not been independently confirmed, and Tennessee officials have not publicly explained what went wrong.
Pike’s lawyers welcomed Mr Strada’s departure but said it would not improve their client’s condition. They have described the incident as evidence of wider problems within the state’s death penalty system.
Governor Lee has ordered an independent review and halted further executions in Tennessee for the remainder of 2026. The state has not said whether it could legally attempt to execute Pike again if she survives.
The episode is the second failed execution in Tennessee this year. In May, officials abandoned the execution of Tony Von Carruthers after they were unable to establish the intravenous access required to administer the lethal drug.
Strada, who became Tennessee’s corrections commissioner in January 2023 after serving as deputy director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, announced in late 2024 that the state would change its lethal-injection procedure and use pentobarbital alone.
Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed her classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995. She had been due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in two centuries before the procedure failed.
