Less than 24 hours after an execution date was set for Kelly Gissendaner, her lawyers released an emotion-tinged video of two of her three children speaking of their heartache should their mother be put to death.
“My brothers and I have dealt with our anger toward our mother and her role in dad’s death in different ways, but we are united in our hope that she won’t be executed,” Kayla Gissendaner, the oldest of Kelly Gissendaner’s children, said in a written statement that accompanied the video. “We’ve lost our dad. We can’t imagine losing our mom too.”
On Friday, a Gwinnett County judge signed a warrant that Kelly Gissendaner should be put to death between noon Sept.29 and noon Oct. 6. The Department of Corrections has not announced the specific time and date but usually it's 7 p.m. on the first day of the window set by the judge. If she is executed, Kelly Gissendaner will be the first woman Georgia has put to death in 50 years.
Kelly Gissendaner was sentenced to die for planning her husband’s 1997 murder and then persuading her then-lover, Gregory Owen, to carry it out. Owen pleaded guilty to forcing Douglas Gissendaner at knife-point to drive to a remote corner of Gwinnett County. Owen testified at Kelly Gissendaner’s trial that he knocked Douglas unconscious and then repeatedly stabbed him in the neck. He said Kelly Gissendaner given him the nightstick and the knife that he used and then she helped him set fire to Douglas Gissendaner’s car.
For pleading guilty and testifying against Kelly Gissendaner, Owen was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole once he has served 25 years. Kelly Gissendaner refused to take a similar deal.
When Kelly Gissendaner's execution warrant was signed Friday, it ended a moratorium on lethal injections in Georgia that had been in place since March. The state abruptly stopped Kelly Gissendaner's execution that was scheduled for March 2 because the compounded pentobarbital was cloudy. The Department of Corrections later determine cold storage temperatures were to blame and said the pentobarbital, a sedative, was safe and would have worked without causing unnecessary pain.
Since then, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has made numerous requests to interview Kelly Gissendaner’s children but they were all declined. Instead, Kelly Gissendaner’s lawyers released a video Saturday of two of her three children, Kayla and Dakota, speaking about their parents. The video was edited and contained background music to set an emotional tone. It was not known why Kelly Gissendaner’s other child, Brandon Gissendaner, did not participate.
“The case began with manipulation by Kelly Gissendaner and it appears it will end with manipulation by Kelly Gissendaner,” said Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter.
Kayla and Dakota Gissendaner said on the video that they re-established their relationships with their mother after years of estrangement and they found her to be a changed woman. They said she helped other inmates.
“Georgia is planning to kill my mother for her role in the murder of my father,” Kayla Gissendaner wrote. “My father would not want this to happen. He would not want the children he loved so much to endure the unspeakable pain that her execution would bring.”
Porter said no one can know if Douglas Gissendaner would want his wife put to death for his murder, but Douglas Gissendaner’s parents did want her executed.
“I was at the clemency hearing (earlier this year) and they spoke about how they felt about Doug’s killer and what they believed justice was. And I greed with that,” Porter said.
Douglas Gissendaner’s parents could not be reached for comment Saturday.
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