If she is put to death, Gissendaner will be the state’s first female convict to be executed in 70 years.
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Kelly Renee Gissendaner sang the famous Christian song moments before she was given lethal injection at 12:21a.m., according to NBC News.
She had been convicted of pushing her lover to kill her husband Douglas Gissendaner in February 1997.
Gissendaner was set to be executed at 7 p.m., but a last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court delayed the execution for more than an hour, The Washington Post reported.
Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher also made representations to say Gissendaner’s death sentence was disproportionate to the crime that she committed.
“The outcome illustrates one of the fundamental flaws with the death penalty – it’s applied arbitrarily”, said Steven Hawkins, executive director of Amnesty worldwide, which is among a number of groups calling for her sentence to be commuted to life in prison. Her execution was reset for a week later, on March 2, 2015, but corrections officials postponed it “out of an abundance of caution”, as the execution drug appeared “cloudy”.
“This is the third execution date she’s faced, and this one had a lot of question marks around it, so I think it’s been hard to even know how to feel”.
Gissendaner was put to death after the federal courts refused to intercede and the state panel turned down an application for clemency that drew the support of Pope Francis.
Gissendaner’s decision to not accept a plea deal came from her attorney at the time, said the Rev. Cathy Zappa, the priest who counseled the inmate. Her supporters argued that her “good works in prison” justified a commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment.
In 1997, Gissendaner was convicted of persuading her boyfriend to kill her husband, Douglas.
She’s been on death row ever since. The board said the meeting Tuesday would allow it to gather additional information from representatives for Gissendaner.
A Georgia woman, who spent 17 years on death row, spent her final hours with a local chaplain, Tuesday night.
For her last meal, Gissendaner requested cheese dip with chips, Texas nachos with fajita meat and a diet frosted lemonade.
Leaders from the Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta were hoping they would change the minds of parole board members. He initially denied involvement but eventually confessed and implicated Kelly Gissendaner.
Owen, the perpetrator of the crime, was sentenced to life imprisonment after he testified against her in court.
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Kelly’s children had also issued appeals for clemency on behalf of their mother saying that their late father would not want them to lose another parent.
