The state is postponing the executions of Kelly Gissendaner and Brian Keith Terrell, who was to die next week, so the Department of Corrections can do more analysis of the drug that was to have been used Monday night in a planned lethal injection.
Gissendaner’s execution was called off Monday around 10:30 p.m., more than three hours after it was to have been carried out, because the pentobarbital that was made specifically for her execution was cloudy.
The current execution warrant for Gissendaner expires at noon on Wednesday.
DOC said in a statement that new execution warrants for Gissendaner and Terrell will be issued once the agency has resolved any problems with the drug.
When a spokeswoman announced the postponement to media at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification prison near Jackson, she said the batch of the strong sedative had been tested by an independent lab and it met standards.
Gissendaner, convicted in Gwinnett County, twice came within hours of dying in the past week for the 1997 murder of her husband, a crime that was actually carried out by her lover. Last week, the execution set for Wednesday was rescheduled because a winter storm would have made it difficult to move Gissendaner from the women’s prison in Habersham County to the men’s prison near Jackson, which is where the death chamber is located.
Terrell had been scheduled to die on Tuesday for the 1992 murder of an elderly man in Walton County.
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