Tennessee’s prison chief has resigned after the state failed to execute death row inmate Christa Pike, who survived two doses of lethal injection drugs.
Governor Bill Lee announced on Saturday that Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada had submitted his resignation, days after Pike’s execution went badly wrong.
Lee said he accepted the resignation and thanked Strada for his service, while acknowledging that the state had fallen short of what was expected during the execution.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to be executed on September 30 for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.
Prison officials administered two doses of pentobarbital, but Pike did not die. She was later taken to hospital, where doctors had to treat the effects of the same drug that had been intended to kill her.
Her lawyers said execution staff struggled to establish intravenous access and repeatedly inserted needles into her arms. They later described her arms as swollen and blistered and alleged that the IV lines had not been properly placed.
The Tennessee Department of Correction has maintained that staff followed the state’s execution protocol. The failed execution has now triggered wider consequences for Tennessee’s death penalty system.
Lee has halted executions in the state for the remainder of 2026 and ordered an independent investigation into what happened. It was also not the first execution problem Tennessee has faced this year. An attempt to execute Tony Carruthers in May was called off after officials were unable to establish an IV line.
Strada had led the Tennessee Department of Correction since January 2023. Before taking the job, he spent years working in Arizona’s prison system.
2026-10-03 23:36:00
