A woman has been executed in the U.S. state of Georgia, despite pleas from Pope Francis for a commutation of her sentence.
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The state of Georgia executed its first female inmate in 70 years Wednesday (Sept. 30), despite a stay of execution plea from the Pope.
Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 47, died from lethal injection at 12:21 a.m.in the state prison in Jackson, officials said. Kelli Gissendaner, a 47-year-old mother of three sentenced to death for plotting her husband’s murder, was lethally injected at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison. Prosecutors said she recruited her then boyfriend to murder her husband, Douglas Gissendaner, who was stabbed to death in a desolate area in suburban Atlanta after being kidnapped from his home.
Gissendaner’s supporters included her three adult children and a former Georgia Supreme Court justice who said he was wrong to deny one of Gissendaner’s earlier appeals. “She targeted him and his death was intentional”, Douglas Gissendaner’s loved ones said in a written statement. She was sentenced to death in 1997 for orchestrating the murder of Doug Gissendaner.
The man who actually committed the kidnapping and killing, Owen, received a life sentence and he is eligible for parole in 2022. She called her ex-husband an “amazing man who died because of me”. Acting on Kelly Gissendaner’s instructions, Mr. Owen forced Douglas to drive to a remote area before stabbing him to death.
“After carefully considering the request for reconsideration, and meeting with Gissendaner’s representatives again today, the Board has voted to let the decision of February 25, 2015, denying clemency stand”.
Tonight at seven O’Clock on the dot a small group gathered at the courthouse in Augusta right under Lady Justice praying for the life of Kelly Gissendaner.
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.
“I think she put a lot of faith in that decision”, Zappa told CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday morning.
The board, which had the option of commuting her sentence to life in prison, met for hours Tuesday and heard from her oldest son, Brandon Brookshire.
Gissendaner was the first woman executed in Georgia since 1945 when the electric chair was still used to execute prisoners. It was rescheduled for a month later, but corrections officials canceled that date over concerns about the quality of the lethal drugs to be used in the execution. Owen implicated Kelly in court in exchange for life imprisonment and not the death penalty.
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Her lawyers have argued that Gissendaner’s sentence was “disproportionate” compared to that of her co-defendant. The last woman in Georgia was executed by electric chair in 1945.
