The prison commissioner in the southern US state of Tennessee, Frank Strada, has resigned following the botched execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced on Saturday that Strada would leave his post this month, following the failed lethal injection that left Pike critically ill.
Pike’s lawyers said the 50-year-old remained unconscious and on a ventilator in a hospital after the execution went wrong on Wednesday.
Pike survived two injections of pentobarbital, a normally lethal substance, during the execution carried out as punishment for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.
The incident marks the second failed execution in Tennessee this year. In May, the state halted another execution after medical staff were unable to access a vein in the prisoner’s arm.
Lee said he thanked Strada for “his willingness to put the interests of Tennesseans first during this difficult moment.”
In the same statement, Strada said he continued to believe the Tennessee Department of Correction had carried out its responsibilities in accordance with established protocol.
Lee, who had previously denied Pike clemency, has suspended further executions in Tennessee for the rest of the year while authorities conduct a review of the state’s execution procedures.
Had the lethal injection killed Pike, she would have become the first woman executed by Tennessee in more than two centuries.
Across the United States, only 18 women have been executed since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre.
