Tennessee prison chief resigns after Christa Pike's botched lethal injection

Tennessee’s prison commissioner has resigned over the botched execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike, Governor Bill Lee said on Saturday, AFP reported.

Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada will leave his post this month, Lee said in a statement. Pike, 50, survived two lethal injections of pentobarbital at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Sept 30, administered as punishment for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.

Her lawyers said in a court filing that Pike remains unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator at a Nashville-area hospital, with both arms “swollen, burned, and blistered” — injuries consistent with IV infiltration, where the drug leaks into surrounding tissue. Witnesses said she stayed awake longer than expected and was heard “loudly snoring” before an ambulance took her to hospital. In a separate federal filing, her legal team said state attorneys argued the department had “no obligation to render life-saving care” once the execution went awry.

Lee, who had previously denied Pike clemency, halted all further executions through the rest of the year and ordered a comprehensive third-party review. It was the second failed execution in Tennessee this year; in May the state halted the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers after staff could not establish an IV line.

Had the drugs killed her, Pike would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than two centuries, AFP noted. Strada said he continued to believe the department had acted in line with established protocol.