Douglas Gissendaner’s parents and siblings said Wednesday they would keep pushing to see his widow put to death for murdering him, after her execution was postponed this week.
“Doug is the true victim of this premeditated and heinous crime,” his family said in a statement released through the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office. “We, along with our friends and supporters and our faith, will continue fighting for Doug until he gets the justice he deserves no matter how long it takes.”
Kelly Gissendaner was scheduled to die at 7 p.m Monday, but about three hours after the appointed time of her death the execution was postponed because of a question about the lethal injection drug.
A pharmacist for the Department of Corrections said the pentobarbital made specifically for her execution was “cloudy.” An independent lab had examined the drug earlier and found it “within the acceptable testing limits.” It was made by a compounding pharmacy, which makes individual dosages of drugs. The identity of that pharmacy is a secret under Georgia law.
On Tuesday, the DOC announced it had also postponed another execution that was scheduled next week until it determines what caused the problem with the pentobarbital, a powerful sedative, meant for Gissendaner.
Her execution warrant expired at noon Wednesday. She had come within hours of death twice in one week. Initially she had been scheduled to die Feb. 25 but the corrections commissioner said a winter storm would make it too dangerous to move her from the women’s prison in North Georgia to the death chamber in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison 50 miles south of Atlanta.
Gissendaner was sentenced to die for plotting the 1997 murder of her husband and persuading lover, Gregory Owen, to carry it out. She was at a bar with friends when Owen made her husband drive to a remote area in Gwinnett County, knocked him out, then repeatedly stabbed him in the neck.
Owen pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Gissendaner rejected a similar plea offer, went to trial and was sentenced to die.
Clergymen, prison guards and former inmates and wardens have advocated for clemency. They spoke of how much she has changed and has become a positive influence in prison. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles has twice declined to stop her execution, and Gissendaner had already exhausted all her appeals.
The inmate who had been scheduled to die next week is Brian Keith Terrell, condemned for the 1992 murder of an elderly family friend in Walton County. Judges in Gwinnett and Walton counties will have to sign new execution warrants before he or Gissendaner can be rescheduled to die. The warrants will define a seven-day window in which their executions must be carried out, starting no sooner than 10 days or later than 20 days after the warrant is signed.
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