Tennessee’s top prison official is stepping down in the wake of the state’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike, Gov. Bill Lee said Saturday, as a former federal prosecutor prepares to examine what went wrong.
Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction, will leave the post at the end of the month, Lee said. An interim commissioner will be named later, according to the governor’s statement, as reported by ABC News.
Pike, 50, was given two doses of the execution drug pentobarbital on the night of Sept. 30 but did not die. She has been hospitalized ever since, unconscious and breathing with the help of a ventilator, one of her lawyers, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Her attorneys said it may be several more days before they know whether she can recover, The Associated Press reported.
In a statement released by Lee’s office, Strada said his departure was “in the best interest of Tennesseans” during the outside review. Lee said Strada had served with integrity and thanked him for his commitment to a smooth leadership transition.
Independent review ordered
At Lee’s request, the state attorney general’s office has retained Ed Stanton, a former U.S. attorney, to examine how the Department of Correction handled Pike’s court-ordered sentence. The review will look at whether the state followed its execution protocol and whether further changes are needed, according to the governor’s office.
Stanton led a similar review in 2022, after an execution was called off at the last minute because officials had not properly tested the lethal injection drugs. His work led the state to substantially rewrite its protocol before executions resumed, the governor’s office said.
Lee has also called off the last execution Tennessee had scheduled this year, for Gary Wayne Sutton on Dec. 3, until the review is finished, WSMV-TV reported. Speaking to reporters Thursday, the governor said that as far as officials knew, the department had followed its protocol, and that the state needed to understand why the outcome was different this time.
Second failed execution this year
The Pike case is the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution, The Associated Press noted. An attempt in May to execute Tony Carruthers was halted when staff could not set a backup IV line, and the governor then put off any new attempt to execute him for at least a year.
In an emergency motion filed Friday in Davidson County Chancery Court, Pike’s attorneys asked for an order requiring the department to preserve all evidence connected to the attempt, ABC News reported. The lawyers allege that staff did not place the IV lines correctly and that at least some of the drug went into her body rather than her bloodstream.
Pike’s four attorneys, Kelly Gleason, Randy Spivey, Luke Ihnen and Stephen Ferrell, called Strada’s resignation justified but said it would not help their client now. “What happened to her Wednesday reflects a systemic failure that goes far beyond any one person,” the lawyers said. Pike’s legal team is seeking a commutation of her death sentence to life in prison, the AP reported. Lee had denied her clemency petition two days before the execution attempt.
The Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks capital punishment nationwide, said it knows of no earlier reported case of a prisoner surviving a lethal injection once the drugs had been given, ABC News reported.
Background on the case
Pike was convicted in the January 1995 killing of Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old classmate at a job training center in Knoxville. Pike, who was 18 at the time, was among the youngest women ever sent to death row. She is the sole woman on death row in Tennessee, and her execution would have been the state’s first of a woman in more than 200 years.
Before taking over Tennessee’s prison system in January 2023, Strada was the Arizona Department of Corrections’ deputy director, a role in which he oversaw prisons during three 2022 executions that advocates say were botched. The Death Penalty Information Center has described each of them as “visibly problematic.” Under Strada, Tennessee moved in late 2024 to a protocol that relies solely on pentobarbital. The department says the state has put four people to death since 2025.
What’s next
Executions in Tennessee are on hold while Stanton conducts his review, and the state has not yet named Strada’s interim replacement. Pike’s attorneys have said they hope the review will expose deeper problems in the state’s death penalty system.
