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[h=4]Ga. mother's execution postponed[/h]ACKSON, Ga. — Kelly Renee Gissendaner's execution was delayed by more than three and a half hours Monday evening as U.S. Supreme Court justices weighed last-minute arguments by her attorneys.
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Kelly Renee Gissendaner(Photo: Georgia Department of Corrections)
JACKSON, Ga. — Kelly Renee Gissendaner's execution was postponed Monday night when officials cited problems with the lone drug that would be used for the lethal injection.
The drug, pentobarbital, had a cloudy appearance, prompting officials to call a pharmacist and then out of an "abundance of caution" to postpone the execution, said Georgia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan. She did not give a new date.
Gissendaner was scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. ET at the prison in Jackson for the February 1997 murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. The execution was put on hold while officials waited for the U.S. Supreme Court to either grant or deny a stay requested by her lawyers. The court had still not ruled five hours later.
An appellate court had rejected the lawyers' request for a delay on the grounds that Georgia's lethal-injection procedures aren't transparent enough to be challenged in court. Late Monday, the lawyers added additional arguments for the high court: that it should consider a stay because Gissendaner didn't kill her husband herself, and because she had been thoroughly rehabilitated.
The execution had been scheduled for Feb. 25, but was delayed until Monday because of a winter storm.
Monday night about 100 protesters gathered outside the prison in 50-degree weather as the hours ticked by.
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, the only entity authorized to commute a death sentence, denied clemency last week and upheld that decision late Monday. The woman's lawyers had urged the board to reconsider and "bestow mercy" by commuting her sentence to life without parole. The board said it voted to abide by its earlier decision after "careful consideration" of the request.
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Kelly Gissendaner, the only woman on Georgia's death row, is scheduled to be die for masterminding a plot to have her boyfriend kill her husband in 1997, but her children and supporters say she is not the same person from all those years ago.
Last week, the Pardons and Paroles Board denied clemency for Gissendaner. Douglas Gissendaner's relatives continue to stand behind the verdict and sentence.
The courts found she 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 American woman put to death since the U.S. 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.
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Supporters hold vigil for Ga. female death row inmate
Supporters held a vigil Sunday night for the only woman on Georgia's death row and the first female to be executed in the state in 70 years. A group of clergy, family, friends and supporters gathered at the William Cannon Chapel at Emory University to pray for Gissendaner, 46. Gissendaner's three adult children sat in the front row.
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.
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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.
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.
Her clemency petition already included testimonials from dozens of spiritual advisers, inmates and prison staff who described a seriously damaged woman transformed through faith behind bars. She has shown remorse and provided hope to struggling inmates while helping guards maintain control, they said.
"The spiritual transformation and depth of faith that Ms. Gissendaner demonstrates and practices is a deep and sincere expression of a personal relationship with God," prison chaplain Susan Bishop wrote. "It is not a superficial religious experience."
Two of Gissendaner's three children also asked the board to spare their mother's life, describing their own emotional journey from anger and bitterness to forgiveness.
Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said Gissendaner's death sentence was appropriate for her crime. "Really, what she's done since is almost not something that needs to be considered," he said.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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