Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada announced his resignation Saturday following the failed execution of death row inmate Christa Pike on Wednesday. Governor Bill Lee confirmed the departure in a joint statement with Strada, who said stepping down serves "the best interests" of the state.
Pike, 18 at the time of the 1995 killing, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. She survived two injections of pentobarbital during the execution attempt and remains hospitalized in critical condition in Nashville. Doctors are attempting to clear the drugs from her body. As of Thursday night, she was unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator.
According to Pike's legal team, she "could be heard crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly throughout the procedure." Her attorneys had previously warned that her medical history, including a blood-clotting condition and small veins, posed risks of unnecessary pain during lethal injection.
Lee has ordered an independent review into the execution and halted all state executions for the year. The state's Department of Correction has not publicly explained what went wrong and has not said whether authorities will attempt the execution again. Strada's statement said the ongoing investigation is "entirely appropriate and necessary."
Pike's legal team called the resignation "justified" but said it "does nothing to help Christa now." They wrote: "What happened to her Wednesday reflects a systemic failure that goes far beyond any one person. We hope the Governor's call for a full, independent review will expose the profound problems within Tennessee's entire death penalty system."
Pike's lawyers filed an emergency motion Friday to preserve evidence related to the failed execution. The US Supreme Court rejected two separate last-minute legal challenges to the lethal injection, and Lee denied Pike's clemency request. Pike is the only woman on Tennessee's death row.