Tennessee prisons official resigns after Christa Pike’s failed US execution

The official in charge of the prison system in the US state of Tennessee has resigned just days after overseeing the botched execution of Christa Pike.

The state’s governor, Bill Lee, announced on Saturday that Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada would step down from his role later this month, a decision Lee described as necessary after the stunning failure.

“Commissioner Strada has served with integrity, and I appreciate his willingness to put the interests of Tennesseans first during this difficult moment”, Lee said in a statement. “I have accepted his decision to step down and am grateful for his commitment to ensuring a smooth leadership transition”.

A replacement for Strada was not announced.

Strada, who started his role in Tennessee three years ago, previously served as a top official in Arizona’s corrections department where multiple executions on his watch faced complications. He said he was resigning “in the best interest of Tennesseans” as an independent review examines what went wrong.

“I believe this review is entirely appropriate and necessary, and I look forward to doing everything I can to help determine exactly what occurred,” Strada said in a statement that defended his department’s handling of Pike’s execution.

Pike was transported from prison to hospital on Wednesday after surviving two injections of the drug pentobarbital, which Tennessee uses to execute prisoners.

Strada’s resignation was “justified”, Pike’s lawyers said in a statement. “But it does nothing to help Christa now.”

“What happened to her Wednesday reflects a systemic failure that goes far beyond any one person,” they wrote. “We hope the Governor’s call for a full, independent review will expose the profound problems within Tennessee’s entire death penalty system.”

In a court filing on Friday, Pike’s lawyers said she had been placed on a ventilator and intubated as medical staff worked to clear the drug from her system. They argued problems with the IV lines caused the pentobarbital to flow into her body instead of her bloodstream.

“Apparently at no point did any member of the execution team realise that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown and that the pentobarbital was, in whole or in part, entering Ms Pike’s body,” they wrote in the filing.

Pike was 18 years old when she was sentenced to death for the torture and murder of another young woman in 1995, becoming one of the youngest women to be sent to death row.

Lee has suspended all executions for the remainder of the year while the state investigates.