ATLANTA — The only woman on Georgia's death row will become the first female to be executed in 70 years in the state Monday unless the U.S. Supreme Court or the state parole board steps in with a last-minute reprieve.
Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, was scheduled to die by injection of pentobarbital at 7 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson for the February 1997 murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. More than three hours later, crowds outside the prison were still waiting on word about her execution.
Channel 2's Steve Gehlbach said protestors had gathered outside the facility on Monday evening.
The courts found Gissendaner plotted the stabbing death of her husband by her boyfriend, Gregory Owen, who will be up for parole in eight years after accepting a life sentence and testifying against her.
Gissendaner would be only the 16th woman put to death nationwide since the Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume in 1976. About 1,400 men have been executed since then, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Religous leaders carried box after box of a signed petition into Gov. Nathan Deal's office on Monday asking for Mercy.
"To kill her this night will be a moral disaster. A major ethical moral misstep which will leave a dark mark on the conscience of the state of Georgia," Rev. Raphael Warnock said.
Kara Tragesser told Channel 2's Linda Stouffer she befriended Gissendaner in prison.
"We are victims of the state if they kill Kelly. Her children are victims all over again adn they love their mom and they want to be with their mom," Tragesser said.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only entity authorized to commute a death sentence, denied clemency last week, but her lawyers urged them Monday to reconsider and "bestow mercy" by commuting her sentence to life without parole.
Kelly and Douglas Gissendaner had a troubled relationship, repeatedly splitting up and getting back together, divorcing and remarrying. She was a 28-year-old mother of three children, 12, 7 and 5 years old. And she had an on-again, off-again lover in Owen.
In prison, Gissendaner eventually took responsibility: Rather than divorcing her husband again, she pushed Owen to kill him. Acting on her instructions, Owen ambushed her husband while she went out dancing with friends, and forced him to drive to a remote area. Then he marched him into the woods and stabbed him multiple times, prosecutors said.
Owen and Gissendaner then met up and set fire to the dead man's car in an attempted cover-up, and both initially denied involvement, but Owen eventually confessed and testified against his former girlfriend.
Her lawyers challenged the constitutionality of her sentence as disproportionate, given that she wasn't there when Owen killed her husband, and yet Owen will eventually be eligible for parole. But Georgia's Supreme Court voted 5-2 Monday to deny her motion, citing Owen's testimony that she pushed for murder rather than divorce so that she could get her husband's insurance money.
In their request Monday for reconsideration, Gissendaner's lawyers said the parole board did not have a chance to hear the overwhelmingly positive testimony of many corrections employees who declined to speak up for fear of retaliation.
WSBTV
