Correction commissioner Frank Strada will leave this month after Christa Pike survived a lethal-injection attempt on Wednesday. Governor Bill Lee has paused executions for the rest of 2026 and ordered an independent review.
The head of the Tennessee Department of Correction will step down this month, Governor Bill Lee said on Saturday, days after a failed attempt to execute Christa Pike by lethal injection. Frank Strada's resignation follows the state's second failed execution attempt this year.
The attempt on Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville left Pike unconscious, intubated and on a ventilator, her lawyers wrote in a Friday court filing, Reuters reported. The New York Times reported that she had survived two doses of pentobarbital and that lawyers described burns and blisters on both arms. As of Thursday evening she remained on a ventilator.
Lee had said on Thursday that, so far as officials knew, the department followed the protocol approved by the attorney general's office. On Saturday he announced Strada's resignation and said an interim commissioner would be named later. All remaining executions this year have been paused, and Lee has ordered an independent review.
Strada said that although he believes staff followed protocol, stepping aside was in the best interest of Tennesseans while the review proceeds. The Times reported bipartisan calls for his resignation after the national backlash.
The independent review is the next formal step. No findings on why the injection failed had been released by Saturday.
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- Strada said stepping aside was in the best interest of Tennesseans
- Lee said the department had followed the approved protocol so far as officials knew
- Pike's lawyers described her as unconscious and on a ventilator after the attempt