The head of Tennessee’s prison system is resigning just days after Christa Pike survived two lethal injection attempts. Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday that Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada will step down later this month, with an interim commissioner to be named at a later date.
The announcement came three days after Pike’s failed execution on Wednesday, September 30, at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Pike was given two doses of pentobarbital, the sedative Tennessee uses for lethal injections, and did not die. She was rushed to the hospital, where her attorneys say she remains unconscious and on a ventilator in critical condition.
Strada said in a statement that stepping aside “is in the best interests” of the state while an independent review determines what went wrong. He did not admit fault. “I continue to believe the Department carried out its responsibilities in accordance with the established protocol,” he said.
Lee thanked him on the way out. “I thank Commissioner Strada for his dedicated service to Tennessee and pray God’s blessings over him in the days ahead,” the governor said.
Christa Pike’s legal team was not satisfied. “The resignation of Commissioner Strada is justified, but it does nothing to help Christa now,” her attorneys said. Her lawyers believe problems with the IV lines caused the drug to flow into her body tissue instead of her bloodstream, which would explain why it never took full effect.
The failure was not the first under Strada’s leadership. Pike’s was the second botched execution in Tennessee on his watch this year. Lee appointed Strada in January 2023, and by December 2024 his department had issued the new lethal injection protocols that allowed Tennessee to resume executions. Before coming to Tennessee, Strada served as deputy director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, where multiple executions under his watch also ran into complications. He previously worked as director of operations for GEO Group, a private prison company.
A former U.S. attorney will lead the independent review of Pike’s attempted execution. Lee has also paused all executions in Tennessee through the end of the year and ordered that Pike’s execution be delayed until at least next year.
Christa Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 killing of 19 year old Colleen Slemmer, a fellow student at a Knoxville job training program for troubled teens. Pike was 18 at the time. She had exhausted all of her appeals, and her execution would have made her the first woman put to death in Tennessee in more than 200 years.
Before the execution, Pike’s lawyers had warned the state that a blood disorder made lethal injection especially dangerous for her and asked that she be executed by hanging instead. Since she survived, her legal team has pushed for Tennessee to spare her life entirely.
