She’d been a good prisoner, taking classes and doing what the guards said. But that other inmate started the fight; Kara Tragesser felt she had no choice but to defend herself.
For that, she wound up in solitary confinement at Metro, the state prison in Atlanta. In the quiet, she despaired.
And then she heard a voice, whispered through the vents. It was Kelly, the death-row inmate.
“Are you OK?”
The voice, she knew, was a lifeline. “I’ll be OK,” she said. “I think.”
Tragesser was OK. The Chattanooga resident, incarcerated for nine years for armed robbery, did her time. She left prison in 2009 quietly resolving to walk the straight path her prison pal, Kelly Gissendaner, had advocated.
To do right, added Tragesser, and to protest injustice.
The commitment brought her Monday evening to the Georgia Diagnostic Prison, where she and scores more held a vigil while waiting to learn whether Georgia would execute Gissendaner for engineering the 1997 killing of her husband. It ended when state Department of Corrections officials announced the execution had been postponed.
For the protesters, the announcement was a welcome surprise. They cheered, then clustered around each other, smiling. Theirs had been a long vigil.
Tragesser was one of those who stayed. She and about 100 others gathered outside the prison about 5 p.m. They clustered on a pine-needle-carpeted tract watched by armed police. They lit candles and held signs. They prayed and raised their voices, as if the convicted murderess could somehow hear them behind the thick walls where the state carries out its ultimate punishment.
As she sang, Tragesser thought of her own ordeal. Gissendaner, she said, had urged her to read the Book of Romans — an apt choice. The apostle Paul, author of the book, knew the inside of a cell.
As did she, and Gissendaner. Like Paul, they relied on the Lord in their dark moments.
Monday, as day made way for night, Tragesser prayed that the Almighty was with her friend. “She is filled with the (Holy) Spirit,” said Tragesser. “Anyone who’s met her can see it.”
The moments ticked past. A few drops pattered in the pine trees ringing the site where protesters leaned against each other. About 6:45 p.m., word spread that prisoners were all locked down — a security gesture in the final minutes before an inmate is put to death. Gissendaner was scheduled to die at 7.
At 6:50 p.m., the protesters sang a few stanzas from "Amazing Grace," perhaps the greatest song about redemption ever written. Tragesser quietly recited the 23rd Psalm, in which travelers fear no evil even as they walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Shortly after 7 they joined in a ragged cry: We love Kelly Gissendaner!
The wind dropped. The temperature fell. Protesters reached for sweaters, for each other. Their vigil stretched to 8, then 9, 10. Tragesser watched, and waited.
“Killing her makes no sense at all,” Tragesser said. “She was a light in that prison.”
Through the trees, the lights of the prison winked. Everyone waited, not putting into words a shared fear: Would her spirit fly this night?
Shortly before 11, they learned: The answer, at least temporarily, was no.
Tragesser smiled. Her prayers, she said, had been heard.
“I think this is the miracle we all believe in,” she said. “She (Gissendaner) said anything could happen. God still does miracles.”
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