Tennessee Prison Chief Was Hired Despite a Trail of Troubled Executions
New York Times · LC · trust 55/100
The failed execution of Christa Pike has prompted new scrutiny of Frank Strada, the state’s top prison official, and his past role overseeing executions in Arizona.
Listen · 8:43 min Share full article Frank Strada speaks at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville after an execution in August. Credit... Mark Humphrey/Associated Press By Eduardo Medina Jack Healy and Emily Cochrane
But the official, Frank Strada, had overseen three problem-plagued executions when he was a top prison official in Arizona, and his troubled record has become a focus of inquiries into how Ms. Pike ended up still alive after what should have been a lethal injection this week.
The questions swirling around Ms. Pike’s failed execution echo some of the questions that arose in 2022 after a string of mishaps in executions in Arizona, where Mr. Strada was in charge of the teams that carried out death sentences. In each instance, according to lawyers and court records, the teams struggled to insert IVs into the condemned prisoners’ arms. In one of the cases, the man being executed asked, “Can you believe it?” as the team resorted to inserting a line into his femoral vein. In another, a prisoner, already strapped to the gurney, urged the team to try a vein near his hand.
But in 2023, Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee recruited Mr. Strada to lead the state’s Department of Correction and help restart executions, which had been put on hold in 2022. An independent review , conducted after the abrupt cancellation of a 2022 execution, had found that the state had for years failed to follow its lethal injection rules.
Since Mr. Strada arrived, the Correction Department not only has mishandled Ms. Pike’s execution, but it also failed to execute another convicted murderer, Tony Carruthers, who killed three people and was supposed to be put to death in May.
Fed up, a number of Republican leaders are calling for Mr. Strada to be ousted and saying his tenure has been marred by mismanagement and secrecy.
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