Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said the state’s Department of Correction commissioner Frank Strada will step down after Christa Pike’s failed execution.
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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced that the head of the state’s prison system is resigning following a failed execution of Christa Pike.
Lee said Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada will step down this month, after Pike’s execution attempt on Wednesday.
Strada said in a statement that stepping aside is in the best interests of the state as an independent review is carried out to determine why Pike’s execution failed.
Pike was placed on a ventilator and remained unconscious in a hospital, her attorneys said in a court filing Friday. Her lawyers said hospital staff were working to save her and, as of late Thursday, were trying to clear the two doses of the drug that the state uses to execute prisoners.
Lee ordered an independent review into the failed execution.
Pike’s attorneys said they believed problems with the IV lines caused pentobarbital to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream. They wrote that “at no point did any member of the execution team realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms. Pike’s body,” according to the court filing.
Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed classmate Colleen Slemmer in a jealous rage. She later became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row.
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