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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The head of the Tennessee prison system is resigning after the botched execution of Christa Pike, Gov. Bill Lee announced Saturday.
Lee said Corrections Commissioner Frank Strada will step down this month.
Strada said in a statement that the page “is in the best interest” of the state as an independent review is conducted to determine why Pike’s execution failed on Wednesday.
READ MORE: Christa Gail Pike was not Tennessee’s first botched execution this year. Here’s what to know
Pike was put on a ventilator and remained unconscious at a hospital, her attorneys said in a court filing Friday.
Hospital staff, her lawyers said, were working to save Pike’s life and as of late Thursday were trying to remove the two doses of the drug that the state uses to execute prisoners.
The stunning failure in Tennessee’s execution chamber on Wednesday has both sides of the death penalty debate demanding answers. Lee ordered an independent review.
Pike’s attorneys said they believed the problems with the IV lines caused the pentobarbital to flow into her body rather than her bloodstream.
“Apparently, no member of the execution team noticed that the IV lines were not properly placed or that the veins were blown and that the pentobarbital entered all or part of Ms. Pike’s body,” they wrote in the court filing.
Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend tortured and killed a classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in a jealous rage. She later became one of the youngest women to be sent to death row.
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