 |
| Kelly Gissendaner in her Georgia death row cell. (AP) |
The execution of the only woman on Georgia's death row was postponed late Monday because of a problem with the drugs in the lethal injection.
Kelly Gissendaner was waiting to hear if the U.S. Supreme Court would halt her execution when the Georgia Department of Corrections called it off about 11 p.m.
"Prior to the execution, the drugs were sent to an independent lab for testing of potency," the agency said. "The drugs fell within the acceptable testing limits."
But, official said, in the hours leading up to the execution, the chemicals appeared cloudy.
"The Department of Corrections immediately consulted with a pharmacist, and in an abundance of caution, Inmate Gissendaner's execution has been postponed."
Gissendaner was sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of her husband — carried out by her lover, who got a life sentence.
A letter to the governor signed by 500 Georgia clergy members said the mother of three, who completed a theology program in prison, has turned her life around since the murder.
A letter to the governor signed by 500 Georgia clergy members said the mother of three, who completed a theology program in prison, has turned her life around since the murder.
The 11th U.S. Circuit of Appeals denied a request for a stay of execution Monday, rejecting defense claims that Georgia's use of a non-FDA-approved drug for the lethal injection — obtained in secrecy — violates her constitutional rights.
Gissendaner appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has halted executions that use a different drug. The high court had not yet weighed in when the drug problem was discovered.
Officials gave no date as to when it would be rescheduled.
The only woman on Georgia's death row would have become the first female to be executed in 70 years in the state.
Police in riot gear stood outside the prison while a hundred people were holding a vigil and praying for Gissendaner as the time of her execution neared.
A petition saying the mother of three has turned her life around, even earning a theology degree while in prison, had garnered more than 60,000 signatures as of Monday afternoon, just hours before her scheduled execution.
Gissendaner, 47, has become a "powerful voice for good," the petition says of the woman convicted of orchestrating her husband's death in 1997.
"While incarcerated, she has been a pastoral presence to many, teaching, preaching and living a life of purpose," the petition states. "Kelly is a living testament to the possibility of change and the power of hope. She is an extraordinary example of the rehabilitation that the corrections system aims to produce."
On Sunday night, about 200 people attended a vigil at Emory University's Cannon Chapel, where they sang her praises.
"Killing her is not going to bring anything back. It's not going to undo what's been done," priest Kelly Zappa told CNN affiliate WSB.
Added the Rev. Della Bacote of Nashville: "I'm heartbroken because I testified on Tuesday at the clemency hearing. I heard what others had to say, and I was so moved."
The pleas did not sway Georgia's high court. In a 5-2 decision Monday afternoon, the state Supreme Court denied her request for a stay, and it also dismissed a constitutional challenge claiming that her sentence was disproportionate.
Not since Lena Baker, an African-American convicted of murder and pardoned decades later, had Georgia executed a woman. The state was scheduled to snap that 70-year streak last week before Gissendaner's execution was postponed.
Just hours before she was scheduled to die by injection at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in Jackson on Wednesday, the Georgia Department of Corrections announced it had postponed the execution until Monday at 7 p.m. "due to weather and associated scheduling issues," department spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan said in an email.
Gissendaner was convicted in a February 1997 murder plot that targeted her husband in suburban Atlanta.
She was romantically involved with Gregory Owen and conspired with the 43-year-old to have her husband, Douglas Gissendaner, killed, according to court testimony. Owen wanted Kelly Gissendaner to file for a divorce, but she was concerned that her husband would "not leave her alone if she simply divorced him," court documents said.
The Gissendaners had already divorced once, in 1993, and they remarried in 1995.
Kelly Gissendaner and Owen planned the murder for months. On February 7, 1997, she dropped Owen off at her home, gave him a nightstick and hunting knife, and went out dancing with girlfriends.
Douglas Gissendaner also spent the evening away from home, going to a church friend's house to work on cars. Owen lay in wait until he returned.
When Douglas Gissendaner came home around 11:30 p.m., Owen forced him by knifepoint into a car and drove him to a remote area of Gwinnett County.
There, Owen ordered his victim into the woods, took his watch and wallet to make it look like a robbery, hit him in the head with the nightstick and stabbed Douglas Gissendaner in the neck eight to 10 times.
Kelly Gissendaner arrived just as the murder took place, but she did not immediately get out of her car. She later checked to make sure her husband was dead, then Owen followed her in Douglas Gissendaner's car to retrieve a can of kerosene that Kelly Gissendaner had left for him.
Owen set her husband's car on fire in an effort to hide evidence and left the scene with Kelly Gissendaner.
Police discovered the burned-out automobile the morning after the murder but did not find the body. Authorities kicked off a search.
Kelly Gissendaner, meanwhile, went on local television appealing to the public for information on her husband's whereabouts.
Her and Owen's story started to unravel after a series of police interviews. On February 20, Douglas Gissendaner's face-down body was found about a mile from his car. An autopsy determined the cause of death to be knife wounds to the neck, but the medical examiner couldn't tell which strike killed Douglas Gissendaner because animals had devoured the skin and soft tissue on the right side of his neck.
On February 24, Owen confessed to the killing and implicated Kelly Gissendaner, who was arrested the next day and charged.
While in jail awaiting trial, Kelly Gissendaner grew angry when she heard that Owen was to receive a 25-year sentence for his role in the murder. (Owen is serving life in prison at a facility in Davisboro, according to Georgia Department of Corrections records.)
She began writing letters to hire a third person who would falsely confess to taking her to the crime scene at gunpoint.
She asked her cellmate, Laura McDuffie, to find someone willing to do the job for $10,000, and McDuffie turned Kelly Gissendaner's letters over to authorities via her attorney.
Kelly Gissendaner has exhausted all state and federal appeals, the attorney general said in a statement last week. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles denied her clemency request, Steve Hayes, a spokesman for the board, said Wednesday.
In the clemency application, Gissendaner's lawyers argued she was equally or less culpable than Owen, who actually did the killing. Both defendants were offered identical plea bargains before trial: life in prison with an agreement to not seek parole for 25 years.
Owen accepted the plea bargain and testified against his former girlfriend. Gissendaner was willing to plead guilty, her current lawyers said, but consulted with her trial lawyer and asked prosecutors to remove the stipulation about waiting 25 years to apply for parole.
According to her clemency appeal, her lead trial attorney, Edwin Wilson, said he thought the jury would not sentence her to death "because she was a woman and because she did not actually kill Doug. ... I should have pushed her to take the plea but did not because I thought we would get straight up life if she was convicted."
Her appeal lawyers also argued that Gissendaner had expressed deep remorse for her actions, become a model inmate and grown spiritually. They said her death would cause further hardship for her children.
For her last meal, she requested: two Burger King Whoppers with cheese (with everything), two large orders of fries, popcorn, cornbread, a side of buttermilk and a salad with tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots, cheese, boiled eggs and Newman's Own buttermilk dressing, the Corrections Department said. She also requested a glass of lemonade and cherry-vanilla ice cream for dessert.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, only 15 women have been executed in the United States since 1977.
Police in riot gear stood outside the prison while a hundred people were holding a vigil and praying for Gissendaner as the time of her execution neared.
A petition saying the mother of three has turned her life around, even earning a theology degree while in prison, had garnered more than 60,000 signatures as of Monday afternoon, just hours before her scheduled execution.
Gissendaner, 47, has become a "powerful voice for good," the petition says of the woman convicted of orchestrating her husband's death in 1997.
"While incarcerated, she has been a pastoral presence to many, teaching, preaching and living a life of purpose," the petition states. "Kelly is a living testament to the possibility of change and the power of hope. She is an extraordinary example of the rehabilitation that the corrections system aims to produce."
On Sunday night, about 200 people attended a vigil at Emory University's Cannon Chapel, where they sang her praises.
"Killing her is not going to bring anything back. It's not going to undo what's been done," priest Kelly Zappa told CNN affiliate WSB.
Added the Rev. Della Bacote of Nashville: "I'm heartbroken because I testified on Tuesday at the clemency hearing. I heard what others had to say, and I was so moved."
The pleas did not sway Georgia's high court. In a 5-2 decision Monday afternoon, the state Supreme Court denied her request for a stay, and it also dismissed a constitutional challenge claiming that her sentence was disproportionate.
Not since Lena Baker, an African-American convicted of murder and pardoned decades later, had Georgia executed a woman. The state was scheduled to snap that 70-year streak last week before Gissendaner's execution was postponed.
Just hours before she was scheduled to die by injection at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in Jackson on Wednesday, the Georgia Department of Corrections announced it had postponed the execution until Monday at 7 p.m. "due to weather and associated scheduling issues," department spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan said in an email.
Gissendaner was convicted in a February 1997 murder plot that targeted her husband in suburban Atlanta.
She was romantically involved with Gregory Owen and conspired with the 43-year-old to have her husband, Douglas Gissendaner, killed, according to court testimony. Owen wanted Kelly Gissendaner to file for a divorce, but she was concerned that her husband would "not leave her alone if she simply divorced him," court documents said.
The Gissendaners had already divorced once, in 1993, and they remarried in 1995.
Kelly Gissendaner and Owen planned the murder for months. On February 7, 1997, she dropped Owen off at her home, gave him a nightstick and hunting knife, and went out dancing with girlfriends.
Douglas Gissendaner also spent the evening away from home, going to a church friend's house to work on cars. Owen lay in wait until he returned.
When Douglas Gissendaner came home around 11:30 p.m., Owen forced him by knifepoint into a car and drove him to a remote area of Gwinnett County.
There, Owen ordered his victim into the woods, took his watch and wallet to make it look like a robbery, hit him in the head with the nightstick and stabbed Douglas Gissendaner in the neck eight to 10 times.
Kelly Gissendaner arrived just as the murder took place, but she did not immediately get out of her car. She later checked to make sure her husband was dead, then Owen followed her in Douglas Gissendaner's car to retrieve a can of kerosene that Kelly Gissendaner had left for him.
Owen set her husband's car on fire in an effort to hide evidence and left the scene with Kelly Gissendaner.
Police discovered the burned-out automobile the morning after the murder but did not find the body. Authorities kicked off a search.
Kelly Gissendaner, meanwhile, went on local television appealing to the public for information on her husband's whereabouts.
Her and Owen's story started to unravel after a series of police interviews. On February 20, Douglas Gissendaner's face-down body was found about a mile from his car. An autopsy determined the cause of death to be knife wounds to the neck, but the medical examiner couldn't tell which strike killed Douglas Gissendaner because animals had devoured the skin and soft tissue on the right side of his neck.
On February 24, Owen confessed to the killing and implicated Kelly Gissendaner, who was arrested the next day and charged.
While in jail awaiting trial, Kelly Gissendaner grew angry when she heard that Owen was to receive a 25-year sentence for his role in the murder. (Owen is serving life in prison at a facility in Davisboro, according to Georgia Department of Corrections records.)
She began writing letters to hire a third person who would falsely confess to taking her to the crime scene at gunpoint.
She asked her cellmate, Laura McDuffie, to find someone willing to do the job for $10,000, and McDuffie turned Kelly Gissendaner's letters over to authorities via her attorney.
Kelly Gissendaner has exhausted all state and federal appeals, the attorney general said in a statement last week. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles denied her clemency request, Steve Hayes, a spokesman for the board, said Wednesday.
In the clemency application, Gissendaner's lawyers argued she was equally or less culpable than Owen, who actually did the killing. Both defendants were offered identical plea bargains before trial: life in prison with an agreement to not seek parole for 25 years.
Owen accepted the plea bargain and testified against his former girlfriend. Gissendaner was willing to plead guilty, her current lawyers said, but consulted with her trial lawyer and asked prosecutors to remove the stipulation about waiting 25 years to apply for parole.
According to her clemency appeal, her lead trial attorney, Edwin Wilson, said he thought the jury would not sentence her to death "because she was a woman and because she did not actually kill Doug. ... I should have pushed her to take the plea but did not because I thought we would get straight up life if she was convicted."
Her appeal lawyers also argued that Gissendaner had expressed deep remorse for her actions, become a model inmate and grown spiritually. They said her death would cause further hardship for her children.
For her last meal, she requested: two Burger King Whoppers with cheese (with everything), two large orders of fries, popcorn, cornbread, a side of buttermilk and a salad with tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots, cheese, boiled eggs and Newman's Own buttermilk dressing, the Corrections Department said. She also requested a glass of lemonade and cherry-vanilla ice cream for dessert.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, only 15 women have been executed in the United States since 1977.
Strapped to a gurney, waiting for death ... or a stay
"Robert Waterhouse was scheduled for execution at 6:00pm this evening. In accordance with the established execution protocol he was strapped to the gurney and the needles were inserted into each arm about 45 minutes prior to his appointed time. Just before 6:00, however, he received a 45-minute stay which morphed into an almost 3-hour endurance test as he remained on the gurney as the seconds, minutes and then hours slid by at an excruciatingly slow pace, waiting for someone to tell him if hope was at hand, if he would live or die. Just before 9:00 he received his answer, the plungers were depressed, the syringes emptied and he was summarily killed. Here on the row we can discern the approximate time of death when we see the old white Cadillac hearse trundle in through the back sally port gate to pick up the body, the same familiar 1960′s era hearse I’ve watched for almost 40 years, coming in to retrieve the bodies of murdered prisoners, which used to happen on a regular basis back when I was in open population. I’ve seen a lot of guys, both friends and foes, carted off in that old hearse. Anyway, pause for a moment to imagine being on that gurney for over three hours, the needles in your arms. You’ve already come to terms with your imminent death, you are reconciled with the reality that this is it, this is how you will die, that there will be no reprieve. Then, at the last moment, a cruel trick, you’re given that slim hope, which you instinctively grasp. Some court, somewhere, has given you a temporary stay. You stare at the ceiling while the clock on the wall ticks away. You are totally alone, not a friendly soul in sight, surrounded by grim-faced men who are determined to kill you. Your heart pounds, your body feels electrified and every second seems like an eternity as a Kaleidoscope of wild thoughts crash around franticly in your compressed mind. After 3 hours you are drained, exhausted, terrorized, and then the phone on the wall rings and you’re told it’s time to die…"
- William Van Poyck, Death Row Diary, February 25, 2012. Van Poyck has spent nearly 26 years on death row in solitary confinement. He has written to his sister about his life in prison, and in recent years she has published his letters to a blog called Death Row Diary. In these letters, Poyck writes about everything from the novels and history books he is reading and shows he has watched on PBS to the state of the world and his own philosophy of life–punctuated by news of the deaths of those around him, from illness, suicide, and execution. The excerpts selected by Death Penalty News focus on the inhumane treatment he and other individuals on death row endure as they move ever closer to their own finalities. William Van Poyck was executed on June 13, 2013. Read more here.
Report an error, an omission: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com