Tennessee corrections chief to leave after failed execution
Frank Strada will step down later this month as an independent review examines why Christa Pike survived two injections during her execution attempt.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee says corrections commissioner Frank Strada will step down later this month, days after Christa Pike survived an execution attempt. Lee has suspended executions for the rest of the year while an independent review examines what happened.
Lee announced the departure on Saturday. No replacement has been named. Strada, who took charge of the state’s corrections department three years ago, said he would co-operate with the review and defended his department’s handling of the execution.
Pike was taken to hospital on Wednesday after surviving two injections of pentobarbital. The review has not established why the execution failed.
In a Friday court filing, Pike’s lawyers said she had been intubated and placed on a ventilator. They alleged problems with the IV lines meant the drug entered her body instead of her bloodstream.
Pike’s lawyers called Strada’s departure justified but said it would not help Pike. They argued the incident reflected wider problems in Tennessee’s death penalty system and called for a full independent review.
Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 torture and murder of another young woman.
