Execution Window Set For Only Woman on Death Row in Georgia
A Georgia court set a seven-day execution window for the state’s only female death row inmate on Friday, the Associated Press reports. Kelly Renee Gissendaner’s death was postponed earlier this year because of a problem with the lethal injection drug.
In a news release, attorney general Sam Olens said that a superior court judge in Gwinnett County had issued an order on Friday saying that Gissendaner may be executed between noon on September 29th and noon on October 6th.
Georgia corrections officials temporarily suspended executions in the state on March 2nd out of an “abundance of caution” when the drug they intended to use to execute Gissendaner appeared “cloudy” (likely because it had been shipped and stored at the wrong temperature).
“I just want to tell my kids that I love them and I’m proud of them and no matter what happens tonight, love does beat out hate,” the mother of three says in a video, obtained by NBC News earlier this year, of Gissendaner’s final statement, delivered before her execution was postponed. “You keep strong and keep your heads up. I love you.”
According to the AP, Gissendaner, who was convicted in the February 1997 murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner, would be the first woman executed by the state in 70 years. Prosecutors said that Gissendaner and her lover Gregory Owen stabbed her husband to death. Owen is serving a life sentence.
Image via CNN. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.