Tennessee prison chief to resign after failed execution

The head of Tennessee’s prison system is resigning after the state halted the execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike when the lethal injection failed. Governor Bill Lee said prison commissioner Frank Strada would leave his post this month. Witnesses said Pike was still breathing and moaning after two doses of pentobarbital failed to kill her during Wednesday’s procedure.

She was transferred to hospital in critical condition. Lee said he thanked Strada for putting the interests of Tennesseans first. Strada said stepping aside was in the state’s best interest while an independent review proceeded.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said it had followed established protocol, but Strada described the review as necessary. The state has halted further executions until the investigation is complete. Pike’s lawyers said they believed problems with intravenous lines caused the drug to flow into her body rather than into her bloodstream.

They said on Friday that she was unconscious and on a ventilator. Her legal team welcomed Strada’s departure but said it would not help Pike. The lawyers described the failed execution as a systemic failure extending beyond one person and called for scrutiny of Tennessee’s entire death-penalty system.

Pike was sentenced to death in 1996, when she was 20, for the murder of Colleen Slemmer. Prosecutors said Slemmer was tortured and killed near the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The attempt was the second Tennessee execution halted this year.

The state adopted pentobarbital as its only lethal-injection drug nearly two years ago. Had the procedure succeeded, Pike would have been the first woman executed by Tennessee since 1820.