The board could stand by its previous decision to deny clemency, which would make Gissendaner the first woman Georgia has put to death since 1945.
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Monday’s decision comes as lawyers for Gissendaner scramble to try to convince the courts or the governor to halt her execution, which is scheduled to take place Tuesday night.
Lindsay Bennett, one of the 47-year-old woman’s legal team, said the son, Brandon, didn’t speak at the last clemency hearing in February and plans “to plead for his mother’s life” ahead of her execution, which is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Gissendaner, the only woman on death row in Georgia, was sentenced in 1998 for recruiting Gregory Owen to kill her husband, Douglas Gissendaner.
A spokesman for Georgia’s parole board said Gissendaner’s latest clemency application was being reviewed on Monday.
The parole board is the only entity with the authority to commute a death sentence.
“As part of that opinion, we concluded that her sentence was proportionate to her role in the crime”.
Gissendaner’s lover, Greg Owen, admitted to carrying out the murder of Gissendaner’s husband, Douglas, at the wife’s request. She had no mercy, gave him no rights, no choices, nor the opportunity to live his life.
“We have been asked by various news outlets for a statement regarding the pending execution of Kelly Gissendaner”.
It was Owen, Davis says, who finally told police what happened. Brandon has stayed out of the controversy even as his siblings have waged a vigorous campaign to spare Gissendaner from execution as punishment for killing their father.
Faith leaders have also launched a campaign to have Gissendaner’s death sentence commuted to life without parole because they believe she is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “a new creation”.
She turned down a plea that would have allowed her to seek parole after 25 years, which is a deal that Owen made with prosecutors.
Gissendaner came close to execution twice already this year.
Her execution has been postponed since March when officials cited problems with the lone drug that would be used for the lethal injection.
Gissendaner asked him to reconsider his ruling, which the judge declined to do.
In mid-April they released lab reports, a sworn statement from a pharmacological expert hired by the state and a short video showing a syringe of clear liquid with chunks of a white solid floating in the solution.
“My dad would not want my mom to be executed”, Kayla Gissendaner, the couple’s daughter, said in a recent statement. Officials first called a pharmacist, and then called off the execution “out of an abundance of caution”.
Gissendaner’s lawyers had filed a lawsuit in March saying the period of uncertainty after her execution was postponed – not knowing whether the state would try to proceed again before the execution window expired and what drugs it might use – amounted to “unconstitutional torment and uncertainty”.
O’Donnell wrote that Gissendaner, despite being isolated most of the time, “reached out to other inmates at their lowest ebb of despair and helped them to recognize their worth and to see a path out of prison”.
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Gissendaner has requested a last meal of cheese dip with chips, Texas fajita nachos and a diet frosted lemonade.
