The execution date for Kelly Gissendaner’s death has been delayed multiple times for various reasons, and now it’s being argued that enacting the death penalty on this woman may be considered unfair since it was her boyfriend who actually committed the physical act of murder.
In a related report by the Inquisitr , Georgia’s execution was postponed due to issues with the drug used for capital punishment in the southern state. In the past, botched lethal injections have caused some states to consider bringing back the firing squad or the guillotine .
According to 11 Alive , defense lawyers are attempting to delay Kelly Gissendaner’s execution date by multiple means, and the Georgia Department of Correction issued this statement as the reason for Monday’s delay.
“Within the hours leading up to the scheduled execution, the Execution Team performed the necessary checks. At that time, the drugs appeared cloudy. The Department of Corrections immediately consulted with a pharmacist, and in an abundance of caution, Inmate Gissendaner’s execution has been postponed.”
Besides arguments over lethal injection, they claim the high courts should consider a stay because Gissendaner didn’t kill her husband, Douglas Gissendaner, herself in February of 1997. Instead, Gregory Owen carried out the gruesome stabbing.
Gissendaner said she has “accepted responsibility for her actions” and “expressed deep remorse for the pain she has caused” her family. As Gissendaner admits in her clemency petition, she is guilty but now claims she has been thoroughly rehabilitated.
“There are no excuses for what I did. I am fully responsible for my role in my husband’s murder. I had become so self-centered and bitter about my life and who I had become, that I lost all judgment. I will never understand how I let myself fall into such evil,” said Gissendaner according to Christianity Today .
“I have learned first-hand that no one, not even me, is beyond redemption through God’s grace and mercy. I have learned to place my hope in the God I now know, the God whose plans and promises are made known to me in the whole story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.”
Multiple officers and pastors in the state prison system attest to her changed life, but the reason Gissendaner faces execution instead of Owen is due to the way the two cases were handled. When both were arrested they were offered plea bargains which would guarantee them only life sentences. Owen took the offer, but Gissendaner’s lawyer talked Gissendaner into refusing the offer since he never thought a jury would hand down the death sentence.
Due to this difference, Gregory Owen is serving a life sentence but is up for parole in eight years, while Kelly Gissendaner’s death sentence may be carried out any day now.