By Samuel Miller
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America and Oceania
ATLANTA, United States of America — Georgia’s only female death row inmate won a last-minute clemency hearing on Monday, a day before she is due to be executed by lethal injection, the state parole board said. The Board of Pardons and Paroles will meet behind closed doors on Tuesday morning to consider “supplemental information” in the case of Kelly Gissendaner, opening the possibility for her sentence being commuted to life, with or without parole.
Ms. Gissendaner is the only woman currently on Georgia’s death row.
On Monday, a judge denied a motion to stay the execution of Gissendaner. Thomas Thrash, chief judge of the Northern District of Georgia, also denied a restraining order to stop the execution.
Lawyers for Gissendaner had asked Judge Thrash to stay the execution and give himself time to rule on their request to reconsider his dismissal of a complaint they filed in March.
Judge Thrash said Gissendaner’s lawyers failed to show they were likely to prevail in their challenge of Georgia’s lethal injection protocol, which the lawyers for Ms. Gissendaner contend is “cloaked in secrecy, fraught with errors (and) potentially painful.”
Ms. Gissendaner’s lawyers filed appeals and other motions in federal court and a clemency petition before Georgia’s State Board of Pardons and Paroles, a five-member body appointed by Gov. Nathan Deal. The board refused previous requests but is reconsidering the case, according to its spokesman.
Gissendaner was convicted of murder and sentenced to death after prosecutors said she convinced her then-boyfriend, Gregory Owen, to kill her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. Owen confessed to fatally stabbing Douglas Gissendaner and was sentenced to life in prison, though he will eventually be eligible to seek parole.
Ms. Gissendaner’s execution was twice postponed, first in February due to a winter storm, then in March because the lethal-injection drug to be used looked cloudy.
State officials halted executions and investigated the claims, but then determined the cloudiness had no impact on the drug, and said executions could resume. Her lawyers have challenged use of the drug, arguing that a 2013 Georgia law that makes the manufacturer of drugs used in executions a state secret was unconstitutional, because the public cannot know if the drugs might cause cruel and unusual punishment to the prisoner.
Ms. Gissendaner is currently scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
For more information, please see:
CBS News — Children of woman on Ga. death row plead for her life to be spared – 28 September 2015
CNN — Children plead to spare mother’s life; judge denies stay of execution – 28 September 2015
Reuters — Georgia woman set for execution gets last-minute clemency hearing – 28 September 2015
WSJ — Georgia Woman Set to Die Despite Anti-Death-Penalty Pleas – 27 September 2015
