GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Georgia is set to execute its only woman on death row next week.
Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter told Channel 2’s Tony Thomas that the crime committed by Kelly Gissendaner has stuck in his mind since it happened in 1997.
Gissendaner is accused of plotting to kill her husband.
Porter said the one thing that strikes him about her case is that there was such an easy alternative to this murder: a simple divorce.
Years later, almost all the appeals are over and the same district attorney who called for the death penalty then will now be a witness to the planned execution.
“I think I'm obligated to be down there,” Porter said.
Boxes of evidence from the trial sit outside Porter's office. He says he remembers most details of the 1997 case.
“Kelly was pretty much at the controls,” Porter said.
In 1997, Gissendaner’s husband, Doug, disappeared. Kelly Gissendaner played the loving and concerned wife, holding press conferences in her living room pleading for help.
“If he's somewhere where he can get to a phone, just for him to please call home and let someone know he's all right. That's all I want. I want him home,” Kelly Gissendaner said back in 1997.
Days later, the man Kelly Gissendaner was having an affair with, Greg Owen, confessed to Doug Gissendaner's murder, and said Kelly Gissendaner planned it and even helped him burn the car after the fact.
“It's almost like she had to go back and take a trophy or something,” Porter said.
Kelly Gissendaner would plead for mercy at trial, but was sentenced to death. She has been the only woman on Georgia’s death row for 17 years, and is scheduled to die by lethal injection next Wednesday night.
“I think I have a moral obligation to see the sentence carried out. Otherwise, I think you are just playing politics,” Porter said.
Thomas has been selected as a media representative to witness the execution. One day before, on Tuesday, Kelly Gissendaner will have one last shot to ask for clemency from state leaders.