Tennessee Division of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada stated he’ll resign days after Christa Pike was hospitalized within the wake of a botched execution try, in keeping with Gov. Invoice Lee.
The Tennessee governor’s assertion on Saturday didn’t straight reference the scenario with Pike, who’s at present “critically ill,” unconscious and on a ventilator in a hospital following the Sept. 30 failed execution. Within the announcement, Strada stated that stepping apart was “in the very best curiosity of Tennesseans because the impartial assessment strikes ahead.”
Tennessee Division of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada speaks to the media, Dec. 11, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn.
George Walker IV/AP Picture
“I imagine this assessment is fully acceptable and essential, and I look ahead to doing every part I can to assist decide precisely what occurred,” he stated in a press release.
Lee stated he accepted Strada’s resignation and the commissioner would depart his put up on the finish of the month.
“Commissioner Strada has served with integrity, and I admire his willingness to place the pursuits of Tennesseans first throughout this tough second,” the governor stated in a press release.
An interim commissioner shall be introduced at a later date, the assertion famous.
Pike’s attorneys, Randy Spivey, Kelly Gleason, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen, responded to the Strada stepping down in their very own assertion.
“The resignation of Commissioner Strada is justified, however it does nothing to assist Christa now. What occurred to her Wednesday displays a systemic failure that goes far past anyone particular person,” they wrote. “We hope the Governor’s name for a full, impartial assessment will expose the profound issues inside Tennessee’s total demise penalty system.”
Undated photograph of Christa Pike offered by the Tennessee Division of Correction.
Tennessee Division of Correcti by way of AP
Strada’s resignation comes after questions arose about his record as a correction official and different botched executions.
Strada started serving because the Deputy Director for the Arizona Division of Correction in January 2020 after serving because the director of operations for personal jail operator The Geo Group, in keeping with his LinkedIn web page.
Throughout his tenure in Arizona, he oversaw prisons the place advocates say three executions had been botched.
Based on the Dying Penalty Info Middle, every of the three executions Arizona performed in 2022 was “visibly problematic.”
These three executions had been the state’s first since 2014, when the deadly injection of Joseph Wooden took practically two hours and resulted in him visibly struggling to breathe.
Tennessee Division of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada speaks at Riverbend Most Safety Establishment after the execution of Anthony Darrell Hines, Aug. 13, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn.
Mark Humphrey/AP Picture
After the three executions in 2022 went fallacious, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed an government order directing an impartial assessment of the state’s execution coverage and paused deadly injections within the state.
A couple of month earlier than Hobbs signed her government order, Tennessee’s Gov. Lee introduced that Strada would take over the state’s Division of Correction.
On the time of his appointment, Tennessee too had paused executions after a 2022 incident when a deadly injection was halted on the final minute as a result of officers didn’t correctly check the medicine.
By December 2024 — below Strada’s management — the Tennessee Division of Correction issued new protocols to renew deadly injections within the state.
Pike’s attorneys stated Friday that she is within the hospital on a ventilator and being “handled for the intense results of the pentobarbital administered in the course of the execution try, together with vital accidents to each arms.”
Dying row inmate Christa Pike enters a Knox County Legal Courtroom in Knoxville, Tennessee, December 4, 2007.
J. Miles Cary/USA Right this moment Community by way of Reuters
The attorneys filed an emergency movement Friday in Davidson County Chancery Courtroom looking for an order requiring the Tennessee Division of Correction to protect all related proof associated to the execution try.
Based on the movement, Pike “could possibly be heard crying, whimpering, and respiration loudly” whereas being administered two deadly doses of pentobarbital, at one level stating that her arm “feels prefer it’s about to burst open.” At the very least seven needles had been used to realize IV entry, with one “bent in a 90-degree angle when it was eliminated,” it said.
The movement described pentobarbital, a sedating medicine, as being “caustic and extremely alkaline” and that it “burns upon contact.” Each of Pike’s arms had been “swollen, burned, and blistered” when she arrived at a Nashville-area hospital, the movement said.
“Hospital workers are working to save lots of Ms. Pike’s life and to clear the pentobarbital from her system,” the movement said.
Pike, the primary girl the state deliberate to execute in over 200 years, had raised issues a couple of deadly injection within the months previous to her scheduled execution, arguing that her “thrombocytosis, put up traumatic stress dysfunction and small veins ‘make it positive or very doubtless that there’s a substantial danger that she is going to expertise pointless and superadded ache and struggling, terror, and shame,'” the movement said.
Emergency autos arrive at Riverbend Most Safety Establishment after the execution of Christa Pike was halted, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn.
George Walker IV/AP Picture
Pike is the primary particular person reported to have survived deadly injection after being given drugs, in keeping with the Dying Penalty Info Middle, whose government director referred to the failed try as “the worst we have ever seen and in contrast to some other botched execution within the fashionable period.”
The governor has ordered a “third-party assessment” and a short lived halt to scheduled executions after the execution try.
“As far as we all know, the Division of Correction adopted precisely the protocol as outlined,” the governor advised reporters on Thursday. He stated the state must know “why the end result is completely different this time than ever earlier than.”
ABC Information’ Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.
