Ga. female death row inmate’s last-minute clemency request denied

Georgia's parole board denied a request for clemency by the lone woman on the state's death row, just hours before her scheduled execution on Tuesday.

Kelly Gissendaner, 47, is to be put to death by injection at 7 p.m. EDT at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

The state's Board of Pardons and Paroles met Tuesday to decide whether its refusal earlier this year to commute Gissendaner's sentence to life in prison should stand.

In their latest application to the board, the inmate's lawyers emphasized Gissendaner's model behavior in prison and remorse for her role in plotting her husband's murder in 1997.

They also said her death sentence was inconsistent with her crime because she did not kill Douglas Gissendaner and was not present when he was stabbed to death.

The man who carried out the kidnapping and murder, Kelly Gissendaner's then-boyfriend Gregory Owen, received a life sentence.

"Given Owen's actions, especially when compared to Ms. Gissendaner's actions, Ms. Gissendaner's death sentence can only be considered disproportionate," lawyers said in the application.

Gissendaner's execution [will] be the first death sentence carried out for a woman in Georgia in 70 years. She will be the 16th woman executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Her supporters include her three adult children and a former Georgia Supreme Court justice who says he was wrong to deny one of Gissendaner's earlier appeals. Backers have taken to social media using the hashtag #kellyonmymind to call for her life to be spared.

But the family of Doug Gissendaner said Kelly Gissendaner showed him no mercy.

"As the murderer," the family said in a statement, "she's been given more rights and opportunity over the last 18 years than she ever afforded to Doug who, again, is the victim here."