Tennessee Prison Chief Resigns as Ex-U.S. Attorney Who Led 2022 Review Takes On Pike Case

Tennessee's prisons chief, Frank Strada, is resigning, Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday, and the state has brought in the former federal prosecutor who led its last outside review of lethal injections to examine the failed execution of Christa Pike.

Pike, 50, survived two doses of the sedative pentobarbital on the night of Sept. 30. Her lawyers say in a court filing that she remains unconscious and on a ventilator.

Lee said in a statement that Strada will leave the Department of Correction at the end of October and that an interim commissioner will be named later, ABC News and The Hill reported.

"Commissioner Strada has served with integrity, and I appreciate his willingness to put the interests of Tennesseans first during this difficult moment," Lee said.

Strada, in a statement released by the governor's office, said he still believes the department "carried out its responsibilities in accordance with the established protocol." He added: "Even so, stepping aside is in the best interest of Tennesseans as the independent review moves forward. I believe this review is entirely appropriate and necessary, and I look forward to doing everything I can to help determine exactly what occurred."

The governor's office said Saturday that the state Attorney General's Office, at Lee's request, had retained former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to conduct an "independent review of the Tennessee Department of Correction's actions" in the Pike case, WSMV, WKRN and Fox 17 reported.

"The independent review will seek to determine whether the protocol was followed and consider whether additional recommendations are necessary to ensure the State's protocol continues to be lawful and effective," the governor's office said, according to WSMV. The governor's office did not give a timeline for the review.

Stanton, a partner at the law firm Butler Snow, was U.S. attorney for the Western District of Tennessee from 2010 to 2017, according to the firm. The attorney general's office, which retained Stanton, is also defending the state's execution protocol in court, court filings show.

Lee has also said the one other execution scheduled this year, Gary Wayne Sutton's on Dec. 3, "will not be carried out this year," The Tennessean and NewsNation reported. Fox 17 and WSMV also reported the pause.

Pike's lawyers, Randy Spivey, Kelly Gleason, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen, said the resignation "is justified, but it does nothing to help Christa now. What happened to her Wednesday reflects a systemic failure that goes far beyond any one person," ABC News reported.

In an emergency motion filed Friday in Davidson County Chancery Court, Pike's lawyers wrote that as of Thursday night she was "critically ill," "intubated, on a ventilator, and remains unconscious" at a Nashville-area hospital, and that both of her arms were "swollen, burned, and blistered" when she arrived. The motion asks the court to order the department to preserve all evidence from the execution attempt. An expedited hearing has been granted, but no date has been set, Fox 17 and WKRN reported.

The filing says the IV team used at least seven needles trying to gain access, that one needle was bent at a 90-degree angle when it was removed, and that Pike at one point offered guidance on where to try. She "could be heard crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly," and said, "my arm feels like it's about to burst open," the motion says.

The lawyers argue that no one on the team realized the IV lines were not placed correctly or that her veins had blown, and that the team gave a second lethal dose instead of fixing the problem. Nine months ago, they note, Pike warned the court that a blood disorder, thrombocytosis, small veins and a history of difficult needle insertions made a failed injection likely. Those concerns were dismissed as speculation, the filing says.

The department has not given a public account of what went wrong. In a statement the night of the attempt, it said it "followed every step of the State's lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General's Office" and that the protocol "does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out." The state has not said whether it will try again to execute Pike.

Tennessee's single-drug protocol, dated January 2025 and released in redacted form that month, calls for an IV team of at least two people from outside the department, such as physicians, nurses or paramedics, who are "currently certified, licensed and/or qualified within the United States to place IV lines," according to the document and The Associated Press. The team picks the IV sites and inserts a primary and a backup catheter, and a physician will insert a central line "if necessary," the protocol says.

The public version does not say how many attempts the team may make or how long it may take. It also says that in monthly practice sessions, "No IV is inserted into the person playing the role of the inmate."

Lee paused executions in 2022 and brought in Stanton then, too. His review, released that December, found that drugs prepared for executions since 2018 had not been tested as the protocol required and that department leaders viewed the process "through a tunnel-vision, result-oriented lens," according to the report and the AP. The report said the executioner had "no formal healthcare training" and recommended that the department consider "retaining a consultant with a healthcare background to provide scheduled guidance and training to the Execution Team."

Lee appointed Strada in January 2023, according to the department. He came from Arizona, where he was a deputy director of the state's corrections department. Arizona carried out three executions in 2022, its first in eight years, and all three were marked by problems delivering the lethal drugs, WKMS and The Tennessean reported.

In a November 2025 deposition, Strada acknowledged that the department had not hired a full-time employee or consultant with a pharmaceutical background, another of the 2022 recommendations, The Guardian and WKRN reported.

Pike's was the second execution Tennessee could not complete this year. In May, officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers after the team could not place an IV line, according to the AP and the BBC. Lee said in July that the department "did exactly what they were supposed to" in that case, WPLN reported.

Pike was 18 when she killed Colleen Slemmer, 19, a classmate at a job training center in Knoxville, in 1995. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years, the AP and NBC News have reported.