Execution of female prisoner in Tennessee fails, prison chief resigns

(Central News Agency, Washington, 3rd Comprehensive Foreign News Report) Governor Lee Beal of the southern US state of Tennessee announced today that after the recent failure to execute female prisoner Pike, Strada, the state’s prison chief, has resigned and will leave his post this month.

Agence France-Presse reported that the lawyer for female prisoner Christa Pike said that she is currently in critical condition, unconscious and relying on an artificial respirator in the hospital to survive. She received a lethal injection on the 30th of last month, but an error occurred during the execution and the execution failed.

Parker, 50, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of classmate Colleen Slemmer, but she survived after being injected with two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital during her execution.

This is the second execution failure in Tennessee this year. In May, authorities halted an execution after medical staff failed to find a vein in a death row inmate's arm.

Bill Lee thanked Frank Strada in a statement for his "willingness to put the interests of Tennessee residents first during this difficult time."

Strada also emphasized in the same statement that he still believes that the prison department is fulfilling its responsibilities in accordance with established procedures.

Lee Beale has put a moratorium on the rest of the state's scheduled executions this year and launched a review of the Pike incident.

If the injection killed Pike, she would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years.