Prison chief in Christa Pike case oversaw five ‘botched’ executions, lawyers say | Tennessee

Tennessee’s prison chief is under fire for the failed execution of Christa Pike, which lawyers say was the fifth “botched” execution under his watch in two states since 2022.

Frank Strada, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Corrections, has faced growing questions about the state’s top-secret death penalty protocols since Wednesday night, when Pike became the first death row inmate in the United States to receive lethal drug injections and survive.

Witnesses said Pike, 50, was heard choking and struggling an hour after receiving the first injection of pentobarbital, a sedative, and that after a second dose failed to kill her, she was hospitalized in critical condition.

Strada’s scrutiny comes as Pike’s failed execution has sparked international outrage, with lawyers and advocates calling for a national halt to executions in the United States. Pike’s lawyers called the process “cruel and tortuous,” and a death penalty expert said it was the most botched execution in modern history.

Bill Lee, the Republican governor of Tennessee, suspended executions in the state until the end of the year and ordered an independent investigation. He called the matter “deeply troubling,” but when a reporter asked him about Strada’s leadership, Lee responded, “As far as we know, the Department of Corrections followed exactly the protocol that was outlined.” »

The reporter was pressing the governor on Strada’s story, which includes another botched execution in May of this year, when Tennessee authorities struggled for more than an hour to locate Tony Carruthers’ vein, leading to the procedure being called off. And when Strada was a deputy prison warden in Arizona in 2022, the state carried out three executions that experts and lawyers called protracted and “botched.”

Death penalty lawyers said there were commonalities in the five problematic executions under Strada, including prolonged prisoner suffering and questionable injection procedures, and argued that Lee should never have named Strada given his record in Arizona.

Spokespeople for the Tennessee Department of Corrections declined to answer questions about Strada’s case on Friday and said the commissioner was not available for an interview. A spokesperson for Lee did not respond to inquiries.

“Bottom” executions in Arizona

After joining the Arizona Department of Corrections in 2020, Strada oversaw executions, which included training the teams to carry out the procedures, monitoring practices and obtaining lethal injection drugs, he said in a deposition.

During the execution of Clarence Dixon in Arizona in May 2022, a media witness said the execution team had difficulty placing IVs to administer the lethal drugs, ultimately forcing them to make an incision in the groin to insert the IV. This process, according to his lawyers, lasted about 40 minutes.

In June 2022, a witness said Frank Atwood, a death row inmate, had to help executioners find a vein after authorities repeatedly struggled to kill the 66-year-old, who suffered from a degenerative spinal disease.

And in November 2022, Arizona officials had trouble finding a vein in Murray Hooper, forcing them to insert a catheter into his groin.

The Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that studies capital punishment, classified the three executions in Arizona as “botched,” based on the researchers’ analysis. “Bottoms” is not a legal term, but the group says executions can be botched if there are breaks in protocol or unexpected problems or delays that cause unnecessary suffering.

Dale Baich, who represented Arizona death row inmates during Strada’s tenure, said the fact that execution officials had trouble finding veins suggested they were unqualified: “If your job is to access the veins, you should be able to do that…to me that indicates that the Department of Corrections did not properly vet these team members.”

In a 2023 statement in a court case, Arizona’s corrections chief said his review of execution procedures identified “several critical issues,” including “insufficient knowledge and expertise” of those involved in executions, concerns about IV team procedures, and concerns about the effectiveness of medications.

Troubles in Tennessee

Despite reports of three botched executions in Arizona, Lee appointed Strada to head Tennessee’s prisons in early 2023. The appointment came as Tennessee grappled with its own scandals around lethal injections, with an independent report commissioned by the state in 2022 concluding that Tennessee had failed to follow protocol in several executions, failed to properly test drugs, and had a “tunnel, drug-driven” approach to executions. results”.

Death row lawyers said Strada failed to address the issues raised in that report.

Under Strada, Tennessee removed a key training requirement for people involved in lethal injections, according to Kit Thomas, a death row attorney. Before Strada joined the team, members of the execution team were asked to perform catheterization with saline, records show. But training guidelines put in place under Strada eliminated that requirement, saying: “No IV is inserted into the person playing the role of the inmate.” »

“He reduced training requirements and we saw disastrous results,” Thomas said. “He oversaw executions in Arizona, which involved prolonged and tortuous attempts to establish intravenous lines, and he introduced a similar practice here.”

After Strada left Arizona, corrections officials made changes to the state’s lethal injection process, including increasing the number of people on the IV team providing injections and requiring more rigorous training, records show. But Strada did not oversee similar changes in Tennessee, instead implementing a protocol that mirrored Arizona’s previous policy of requiring only two people on the IV team that performs the injections, Thomas noted.

Thomas also provided excerpts from a November 2025 deposition in which Strada was questioned by death row attorneys. When asked what he considered a successful execution, he replied: “The condemned person is put to death.” » When a lawyer asked, “Anything else?” ”, Strada replied: “No”.

Thomas said Strada’s response suggested he had “no respect for the experience of the executed individual other than they end up dead.” The response, she added, echoes the same “tunnel vision” approach to executions that investigators discussed in the 2022 Tennessee-commissioned report.

In the 2025 deposition, Strada further admitted that he failed to follow some of the 2022 report’s recommendations, including failing to hire a full-time employee or consultant with pharmaceutical training to provide advice on the lethal injection process and failing to hire a full-time employee or consultant to help locate lethal injection sources.

“What good is an independent investigation if investigators make recommendations that are ignored? said Thomas.

Questions multiply about deadly drugs

Questions about how the state acquires, maintains and administers lethal injection drugs are crucial in the wake of the botched killing of Pike, who was sentenced to death in 1996 at age 20 for the murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer.

Pike’s lawyers said Friday that she remained unconscious and on a ventilator. Prison officials have not addressed the question of what might have gone wrong, but some outside experts have questioned whether the pentobarbital might have been degraded or whether it had failed to enter his bloodstream properly and leaked into surrounding tissues.

Tennessee keeps secret the identities of people involved in executions and basic information about the drugs it uses in executions. Thomas highlighted a number of questions that Strada had previously refused to answer, including whether he used the same drug. supplier it had used in Arizona, whether the Tennessee supplier had complied with Food and Drug Administration rules and regulations, and whether it had procedures or checklists to ensure the lethal injection chemicals had not been adulterated.

Stephen Ferrell, a federal defender and one of Pike’s attorneys, expressed skepticism about the governor’s call for another independent investigation, pointing out that the last independent investigation into the state’s death penalty system resulted in continued secrecy.

“We are being kept in the dark,” he said at a news conference Thursday, noting that journalists who witnessed Pike’s botched killing also expressed concerns about the secrecy surrounding the execution proceedings: “Our predictions are downplayed, and yet they continue to come true. Tennessee should not torture its citizens in the name of justice.”

As the governor dodged questions about Strada, candidates running to replace Lee said they would not keep Strada in his position if elected in the November midterms.

Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Tennessee officials should answer questions about Strada’s involvement in multiple botched executions. She also raised concerns about the lack of transparency or accountability after Carruthers’ botched execution in May: “We have seen no information about why this went wrong and no explanation or corrective action to ensure this does not happen again.” »

“Governor Lee should urge his officials to be candid about any mistakes that may have been made and to accept responsibility for anything that went wrong during these executions,” she continued.

Ed Pilkington contributed reporting