A federal appellate court on Wednesday morning temporarily blocked Tennessee from executing Christa Pike, as witnesses had already gathered at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the state's first execution of a woman in centuries. A panel from the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled 2-1 to halt the…
Page A6From§Eachthe noon edition — 3 October 2026
THE COUNT
Tennessee's death penalty chief resigns after his fifth botched execution, hired despite the first four
As it ran on the front
Christa Pike was set to die at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, September 30, the first woman Tennessee would execute in two hundred years. An hour before, the Sixth Circuit stepped in, 2-1, wanting to hear her claims that she had been raped and abused inside the prison system now preparing to kill her. The Supreme Court lifted that stay the same day, over three dissents, and cleared Tennessee to attempt what the appeals court had just paused. The attempt went forward. Pike did not die. She is alive, unconscious, intubated — not the historical first the state was cleared for, a different first: the first death row prisoner in the country's history to survive the needle.
Three days later, Frank Strada resigned as Tennessee's prison commissioner. He had run Arizona's death chambers before he ran Tennessee's. Lawyers tallying his decade across both states count Pike's survival as the fifth botched execution logged under him since 2022, not the first. Tennessee hired him anyway — "despite a trail of troubled executions," in the Times' own phrase — which is a different sentence than hired because of it. Nothing in the record says the four earlier failures were rewarded.…
…(cont) The secrecy was never incidental to that. Back in May, following an earlier botched injection, dozens of the state's own medical professionals wrote the governor that no healthcare worker should take part in an execution by any method. That letter sat for four months. The stay came in September. The resignation came three days after that. An independent review is open now, by the department's own account — open now, not in May, not after Arizona.
Lawyers counted the five this week. Tennessee's own personnel file apparently never did. Run the hire forward instead of back and it stops looking like due diligence: a man carries a documented failure rate from one statehouse to the next, and neither one prices it in, until the sixth attempt happens on a schedule, with witnesses already seated in the room, and a woman survives her own execution to prove the count was real.
“They hired this guy in Tennessee after Arizona already showed them what he does to a death chamber, and the file sat in a drawer instead of getting read. He gets to resign; she's the one on a ventilator right now. The job posting never changes — only the name on the door, after the fifth time makes the news instead of the first.”
“Look, the courts signed off — the Sixth Circuit, the Supreme Court, that's two separate reviews in one afternoon, that's about as much due process as you can build into a Wednesday. Frank Strada didn't personally botch anything, he's a commissioner, he doesn't hold the syringe, and he resigned, which is accountability — that's literally the definition of accountability. Although if the accountability only shows up on failure number five, that's — did I say five? Let me circle back on that number.”
The receipts
Frank Strada facing mounting questions after Pike survives injection with lethal drugs in 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 leadership across two states since 2022. Frank Strada, the commissioner of the Tennessee…
The failed execution of Christa Pike has prompted new scrutiny of Frank Strada, who resigned as the state’s top prison official on Saturday, and his past role overseeing executions in Arizona.
The head of Tennessee's prison system is resigning after the failed execution of Christa Pike.
The Tennessee prison chief who oversaw the botched execution of murderer Christa Pike has stepped down from the position.
Frank Strada, who oversaw the process that left Christa Pike unconscious and hospitalized, quit as an independent review begins.
Christa Pike remains alive but unconscious and intubated after her failed execution on Wednesday, her lawyers said.
· Supreme Court declines Christa Pike's clemency appeal, with Tennessee set to execute first woman in 200 years from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Tennessee court makes last minute move to temporarily halt Christa Pike's execution from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Supreme Court allows execution of Christa Pike to go forward from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Christa Pike’s Tennessee execution halted by court an hour before it was scheduled from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· After failed execution, health workers say Tennessee's method flouts medical ethics from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.