Tennessee Prison Chief Resigns Days After Failed Execution of Christa Pike, Whose Condition Is Described as Dire

The commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction, Frank Strada, has resigned, a source tells The New York Sun, after emailing word of his departure to other state employees Saturday morning. The move comes days after the state failed to execute Christa Pike, the only woman on its death row.Ms. Pike’s condition, the insider notes, appears unchanged. She is on a ventilator and appears to be essentially “brain dead.” Her attorneys say she is unconscious and critically ill in a hospital.Governor Bill Lee confirmed the resignation publicly Saturday, calling it a leadership transition. Mr. Strada will step down this month and an interim commissioner is to be named. Mr. Strada says stepping aside is in the best interest of Tennesseans while an independent review examines what happened, though he maintains the department carried out its duties under the established protocol.Ms. Pike, 50, was to become the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. Mr. Lee had denied clemency on September 28, and after a day of last-minute litigation, the Supreme Court cleared the execution to proceed Wednesday. Pike was strapped to a gurney that evening at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution at Nashville. Officials administered two doses of pentobarbital but she did not die. She was taken to a hospital.In a court filing, her attorneys say problems with her IV lines sent the drug into her body instead of her bloodstream, and that no member of the execution team appeared to notice. They say they had warned the state and the courts months ago that a blood condition would complicate vein access, and that she suffered significant injuries to both arms. As of late Thursday, her lawyers say, doctors were trying to clear the drug from her system.The department says it followed every step of its protocol, which the attorney general’s office approved. Pike had sued in January, arguing that her blood disorder and other medical conditions made lethal injection unconstitutionally cruel.Mr. Lee has halted the state’s remaining executions this year and ordered the independent review. The failure has left both supporters and opponents of the death penalty demanding answers.Mr. Strada, a Lee appointee, took over the department in January 2023 after serving as deputy director of Arizona’s corrections department. He arrived as Tennessee was trying to rebuild trust in its execution process after the governor paused executions in 2022, when an investigation found officials had broken their own lethal injection rules. In late 2024, he announced that the state would use only pentobarbital.Pike’s was the second failed execution Mr. Strada oversaw in Tennessee this year, after the state was unable to carry out the execution of Tony Carruthers in May due to problems establishing IV access.Pike was 18 when, in January 1995, she, her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and a friend lured Colleen Slemmer, a fellow Job Corps student in Knoxville, into the woods near the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus. Slemmer was beaten and stabbed to death. Investigators say a pentagram was carved into her chest and that Pike kept a piece of her skull. Pike was convicted in 1996 and sentenced to death, becoming one of the youngest women in the nation sent to death row.Her attorneys have long argued that her age at the time, a history of childhood physical and sexual abuse, and later diagnoses of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder should have spared her. For years Ms. Pike was the lone woman on the row, in conditions her lawyers likened to solitary confinement.The state’s last execution scheduled for this year, set for December, is canceled.

Tennessee Prison Chief Resigns Days After Failed Execution of Christa Pike, Whose Condition Is Described as Dire

Tennessee Prison Chief Resigns Days After Failed Execution of Christa Pike, Whose Condition Is Described as Dire

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