By admin 
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The corrections official who oversaw troubled executions in Arizona is now at the center of questions in Tennessee after an execution in that state failed.
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Tennessee is pausing executions following the case of death row inmate Christa Pike, who survived two doses of lethal injection drugs. Witnesses said execution staff struggled with the IV for about an hour before administering the drug, pentobarbital. Pike survived, and her attorneys say she is in the hospital in critical condition.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee ordered an investigation into what happened.
“There are a lot of questions. The people of our state deserve to have those questions answered. And that’s what this investigation is for,” Lee said.
Questions point to former Arizona official
Frank Strada was the deputy director of Arizona corrections when the state resumed executions in 2022, the first since the botched execution of Joseph Wood in 2014. That execution took almost two hours and became the longest execution in U.S. history.
When asked whether he bears responsibility for hiring and keeping Strada after he oversaw three botched executions in Arizona and has now had two botched executions in Tennessee, Lee said, “So far as we know, the Department of Correction followed exactly the protocol that was outlined and vetted and approved by the Attorney General’s office.”
Drug doses and vein problems
Dale Baich was one of Wood’s attorneys and witnessed the 2014 execution.
“What we learned is that the state administered a total of 15 doses of the drug and they were only supposed to administer two doses,” Baich said.
Baich said pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell execution drugs to departments of corrections once they learned their products were being used for that purpose.
“What we know is that over time, pharmaceutical companies, once they learned that their product was being used to carry out executions, refused to sell the drugs to the departments of corrections. So the departments improvise,” Baich said.
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One year after Wood’s execution, federal authorities seized a shipment of illegal drugs Arizona intended to use to execute prisoners.
Arizona also has a history of problems accessing inmates’ veins during executions, dating back to 2022, when Strada was in Arizona.
“There were problems accessing the veins. Mr. Strada takes the problems that he had in Arizona and just moved him to Tennessee,” Baich said.
What remains unknown
While the governor of Tennessee says protocols were followed, the qualifications of the people administering the drugs remain shielded from the public.
Under new leadership in Arizona, the last three executions have gone on without any problems.
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