Frank Strada will leave role next month after uproar over execution attempt sends Pike to hospital in critical condition
Tennessee’s prison chief is resigning after the failed execution of Christa Pike, which lawyers say was the fifth “botched” execution under his leadership across two states since 2022.
Frank Strada, the commissioner of the Tennessee department of correction, has faced mounting questions about the state’s highly secretive death penalty protocols since Wednesday evening when Pike became the first death row prisoner in the US to to be injected with lethal drugs and survive.
Witnesses said Pike, 50, was heard choking and struggling an hour after receiving the first injection of pentobarbital, a sedative, and after a second dose failed to kill her she was hospitalized in critical condition.
I thought she picked firing squad. Was it actually not a choice?
As I understand it, in states where firing squad is actually a choice, it is usually only when other means are unavailable or have been declared unconstitutional.
Everyone’s incompetent, or execution system is working as intended?
