Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada will resign this month, Governor Bill Lee announced Saturday, three days after Strada’s department failed to execute convicted murderer Christa Pike despite administering two doses of lethal injection drugs. Tennessee
Lee said he thanked Strada “for his willingness to put the interests of Tennesseans first during this difficult moment,” while Strada maintained in his own statement that his department had acted properly throughout. “I continue to believe the Department carried out its responsibilities in accordance with the established protocol,” Strada said, adding separately that he considered the governor’s ordered review “entirely appropriate and necessary” and intended to cooperate fully in determining what went wrong. Lee has not named a replacement for Strada, who took over the department in January 2023 after serving as deputy director of Arizona’s Department of Corrections.
The Eastern Update has gathered that Wednesday’s execution attempt was the second botched case to occur in Tennessee under Strada’s leadership this year, following a pattern of execution complications that had already followed him from his earlier tenure overseeing capital punishment in Arizona. Pike, 50, remained unconscious and on a ventilator in critical condition as of Friday, according to a court filing from her attorneys, who said medical staff were working to clear pentobarbital from her system after she survived two doses of the sedative. Media witnesses at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville reported hearing Pike snoring for roughly an hour after the drugs were administered, and said she was still alive when they were ushered out of the execution chamber’s viewing area.
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Pike’s legal team had objected to the state’s IV protocol before the execution even began, warning it would cause needless suffering given her small veins and an underlying blood condition. Attorney Randy Spivey said he watched execution staff attempt to start an IV line using seven separate needles in Pike’s left arm alone, “one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her arm after an unsuccessful attempt.” Fellow attorney Stephen Ferrell said medical experts had specifically warned beforehand that needles could become dislodged or pierce through a vein entirely, causing the lethal drugs to flow into surrounding tissue rather than Pike’s bloodstream, a scenario that appears consistent with what ultimately unfolded.
A court filing described pentobarbital as a caustic substance capable of burning skin, tissue and veins on contact, and said both of Pike’s arms were “swollen, burned, and blistered” by the time she arrived at the hospital. Media witnesses reported that Pike told execution staff after receiving the injection that her arm felt like it would “burst open.” The Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks capital punishment data nationwide, said Pike became the first inmate in US history known to have survived after being injected with lethal doses of execution drugs, a distinction that has placed Wednesday’s failure in a category distinct from the roughly seven prior cases in which execution teams were simply unable to establish an IV line at all before a procedure was called off.
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Pike’s attorneys, Spivey, Kelly Gleason, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen, responded to Strada’s resignation by arguing it did little to address the underlying harm already done. “The resignation of Commissioner Strada is justified, but it does nothing to help Christa now,” the legal team said in a statement following Saturday’s announcement. Lee, who had previously denied Pike’s clemency petition, has halted all further executions in Tennessee through the end of the year pending what he has described as a comprehensive, third-party review of what occurred.
Pike’s case had already drawn national attention before Wednesday’s failed execution, centered on her age at the time of her crime and the nature of her defense. She was 18 when she and her boyfriend beat and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer at a job training facility in 1995, a killing that gained widespread notoriety after Slemmer’s body was discovered with a pentagram carved into her chest. Pike’s attorneys had sought clemency citing her young age, documented history of childhood sexual abuse, and subsequent diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, arguments that failed to persuade either Lee or, ultimately, the US Supreme Court, which cleared the way for Wednesday’s execution to proceed after a federal appeals court had briefly halted it.
Had it succeeded, Wednesday’s execution would have made Pike the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Only 18 women have been executed nationwide in the United States since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. No timeline has been given for completing the third-party review Lee ordered, and officials have not said when, or whether, a new execution date will eventually be set for Pike should she recover.
