Tennessee’s prison chief is to resign following the failed execution of death row inmate Christa Pike, Governor Bill Lee has announced.
Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction, said he believed stepping down was “in the best interests” of the state as an independent review into the botched execution gets under way.
“I look forward to doing everything I can to help determine exactly what occurred,” Mr Strada said, describing the inquiry as “entirely appropriate and necessary”.
Pike was due to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday, but the procedure failed twice. Her lawyers said she was unconscious and receiving treatment in a hospital in the Nashville area, where she was intubated and using a ventilator to breathe.
They said she had suffered significant injuries to both arms and that hospital staff were working to remove pentobarbital from her body.
Mr Lee has cancelled the other executions scheduled in Tennessee for the remainder of the year. Pike’s attorneys have also asked a court to order the Department of Correction to preserve all evidence linked to the failed attempt.
Her lawyers alleged that the department’s intravenous team did not appear to realise that Pike’s IV lines had been incorrectly placed or that her veins had blown, allowing the pentobarbital to enter her body.
Pike was due to become the first woman executed in Tennessee since the 1800s after the US Supreme Court ruled that her execution could proceed. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of former classmate Colleen Slemmer.
Court records say Pike, then 18, tortured and killed Slemmer, 19, while both were students at the Job Corps Center in Knoxville. Pike is now 50.
Mr Lee appointed Mr Strada as Tennessee Department of Correction commissioner in January 2023.
