Kelly Gissendaner told her children she loved them and to stay strong in a “final” message recorded about two and a half hours before she believed she would be executed Monday.
Her death was postponed because of a problem with the lethal injection drug.
She spoke calmly with no emotion in her voice, which echoed in a room that most likely had cinder block walls at the Georgia Diagnostic Prison, where executions are carried out.
“I just want to tell my kids I love them and I’m proud of them and no matter what happens tonight, love those who (unintelligible) hate,” Gissendaner said on the recording obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “You keep strong and keep your heads up. I want to tell my lawyers thank you for all they’ve done. No matter what happens, I know you did your best.
“I love you all.”
In the hours before an execution, the inmate is allowed to record a statement without time limits. There is a second chance to make a shorter statement once he or she is strapped to the gurney in the death chamber before witnesses.
A week earlier,Gissendaner had also come within hours of execution, but it was called off because a winter storm made it treacherous to transport her from the women’s prison in North Georgia to the prison where the death chamber is, in Butts County, south of Atlanta.
On Monday, the 46-year-old Gissendaner had already had a physical and her “last” meal and was waiting in a cell a few steps from the death chamber when the decision was made that she would not die that night.
Just before 10:30 p.m., the state told her lawyers that a prison pharmacist noticed that the pentobarbital, custom-made for her execution, was cloudy.
The state postponed her execution indefinitely, as well as one scheduled next week, until the Department of Corrections can determine the problem. The drug had been tested by an independent lab and found to be within guidelines, according to a Department of Corrections spokeswoman.
Gissendaner was convicted of murder in Gwinnett County for persuading her lover to kill her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. She allegedly wanted out of the marriage and hoped to collect a life insurance policy, which turned out not to exist.
Gregory Owen waited for Douglas Gissendaner at the Gissendaner home while Kelly Gissendaner was at a bar with friends on Feb. 7, 1997. Owen forced Douglas Gissendaner to drive to a remote area of Gwinnett County where he knocked the husband unconscious and stabbed him repeatedly in the neck.
Owen pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Gissendaner turned down a similar plea offer, went to trial and was sentenced to die.
If she had been executed, Gissendaner would have been the first woman Georgia has put to death in 70 years.
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