[Lion-hearted Girl]

Kelly Gissendaner execution delayed until Monday due to snow

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A WOMAN who made global headlines after requesting a massive last meal before she is put to death has had her execution delayed — due to a freak snowstorm.



Kelly Gissendaner, 46, had been set to die by lethal injection at 7pm local time today at a prison in Jackson, south of Atlanta after a last ditch clemency bid failed.
However, Gissendaner, who is set to become the first woman to be executed in 70 years in the state of Georgia, will get a bit longer to live after officials announced her death will now take place on Monday.

Prisons spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan confirmed Gissendaner’s execution was delayed “due to weather and associated scheduling issues.”



Ms Hogan said a review of department records indicated this is the first time Georgia has delayed an execution because of weather.

A strong winter storm was due to hit northern Georgia, including in the Atlanta area with Governor Nathan Deal declaring a state of emergency and the closure of school and government offices.

Gissendaner’s lawyers launched a last-minute appeal against the execution but the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles said it had denied a clemency request.

As the execution date looms, more details are emerging of the death row inmate’s case, her tragic past and the murder of her husband which landed her behind bars.



THE CASE:

Gissendaner was sentenced to death for the 1997 killing of her husband Douglas. The couple had separated several times and even divorced before remarrying.
Her marriage was not a happy one and she wanted out and divorce was not an option.

Gissendaner recruited her lover Gregory Owen to carry out the murder and claim her husband’s life insurance.
But while she didn’t actually carry out the killing, her boyfriend pleaded guilty and testified against her and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Prosecutors said Gissendaner drove Owen to her home and gave him a truncheon and a large hunting knife. She left him inside, waiting for her husband to return, while she went off to dance at a local bar one February evening in 1997.



Douglas, who had spent the evening helping friends from their local church repair their car, got back at 11.30pm.

Owen surprised him and drove him — at knifepoint — to a remote wooded area, before walking him deep among the trees and ordering him to kneel down.

His wedding ring was removed to make it look like a robbery and he was knocked out with a blow from the truncheon and then stabbed repeatedly.

Douglas Gissendaner’s body was found still slumped forward, as he had died, on his knees in a remote patch of Georgia woodland two weeks after he was killed.

Prosecutors said Gissendaner had convinced her then boyfriend that he had to prove his love by killing the man she said stood in their way.

Gissendaner arrived at the woods while the killing was in progress and, afterwards, helped set fire to Owen’s car to destroy any forensic evidence.

The following morning, she raised the alarm over her missing husband, even playing the worried wife in TV appeals. By the time police found the body, she had discovered that his life insurance policy was worth only around $10,000.

Following the murder, police and friends noted her apparent lack of emotion, but her biggest mistake was telling them she had a boyfriend.

Police soon uncovered Owen’s connection to her and arrested the pair two days after the funeral. Both were told they faced the death penalty unless they accepted a plea deal — testifying against each other in return for a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Gissendaner refused, but Owen agreed, and a jury convicted her of murder with malice in 1998.

THE TRAGIC TWIST:

Kelly Gissendaner had a tough life and an even tougher upbringing filled with sexual abuse and poverty.
Court documents show Gissendaner was born to a poor cotton farmer father and a mother who now works as a prison officer, and was sexually abused as a child by a string of men.

They included an uncle and even her stepfather, who slept with the then ten-year-old girl for six months under the pretence of helping her get used to a new bed.
When she grew up and married Douglas Gissendaner, their relationship was a rocky one.

Between 1989 and 1996 they married, divorced, remarried, separated and reunited. Her three children, now grown-up, were fathered by different men — one of whom was Douglas.

They moved to Auburn, Georgia, in December 1996. But Douglas didn’t know that his wife had found a boyfriend — Owen — while they had been separated. She rekindled that relationship after she remarried Douglas.

Owen reportedly suggested she divorce Douglas, but she insisted her husband would never leave her alone and death was the only way out.

THE OUTCOME:

While the mother-of-three was sentenced to death, her former lover — the man who actually carried out the killing — escaped with a life sentence that could see him out of prison in just 10 years.

After accepting a controversial plea deal to testify against his partner in crime, Owen admitted his guilt and helped prosecutors portray Gissendaner as the case’s Lady Macbeth — with her suggesting the murder, planning it and urging him to do it.

He might have been ‘the bullet’, as the lead prosecutor liked to phrase it, but she was ‘the gun’.

Her only hope of living was a last minute clemency appeal.

Gissendaner’s lawyers argued she was a changed woman, who has found God and accepted full responsibility for the murder of her husband, NBC News reported.

However, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles held a clemency hearing overnight for Gissendaner and announced the following day that her request for clemency was denied.

The parole board is the only entity in Georgia with the authority to commute a death sentence.

HER LONELY LIFE OF REGRET:

Gissendaner spends 15 hours a day in a 2.7m by 3.65m cell with a small window.

She receives her meals through a hatch in her cell door three times a day, and whenever she needs to leave her room, even to have a shower, she is handcuffed.

Her lawyers argue she has reformed and deserves to live.

“I deserve to be here, but I don’t deserve to die,” she said ten years ago.

“How can you justify me being here when [her former boyfriend Gregory Owen] could be walking the streets one day?”

In previous clemency applications, clergymen and prison officials described her as a changed woman, a “truly redeemed person” who had genuinely found God. Even her children said they have forgiven her and wanted her life spared.

Although not present at the hearing, she said in a statement: “There are no excuses for what I did. I will never understand how I let myself fall into such evil.“

WOMEN ON DEATH ROW:

Experts say juries are often reluctant to send women to Death Row. One in ten suspects arrested for murder in America are women, but only one in 50 of those given death sentences.

Just one in 100 of the prisoners who are eventually executed are female.

The last woman executed in Georgia was African American woman Lena Baker, who killed a white man who enslaved her.

The maid, who died in the electric chair in March 1945, was pardoned in 2005 after a jury found she acted in self-defence.

Georgia is a hard line state, with authorities showing little mercy for offenders.

In January, Georgia executed a decorated Vietnam veteran for murdering a policeman, despite evidence he had been affected by post-traumatic stress disorder. The next execution was of a man with an IQ of only 70.

GISSENDANER’S FINAL MOMENTS:

According to reports, Gissendaner has faced a miserable existence for a long time.

As the only woman on Death Row in her state, she has lived in complete segregation from other inmates in a women’s prison outside Atlanta.

While it may seem a lonely life, anti-death penalty campaigners argue it is preferable to death.

Gissendaner has already chosen a last meal including corn bread with a side of buttermilk. She has also requested two Burger King Whoppers with cheese; two large orders of fries; cherry vanilla ice cream; popcorn; a salad with boiled eggs, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots, cheese and Newman’s Own buttermilk dressing; and lemonade.

She will be allowed a final meeting with loved ones and supporters, a talk with a spiritual adviser and the preparation of the last words.

Then, finally, watched through a glass window by a small group of the victim’s relatives and local media witnesses, she will be strapped to a stretcher in a small execution chamber.

At that point, she will be allowed to deliver a few sentences before she is injected with a cocktail of chemicals designed to put her to sleep and then stop her heart.

She will become the 35th Georgia inmate put to death by lethal injection.

[TrueCrimeJunkie77]

The state of Texas executed a man today (5/13) convicted in the triple murder of his girlfriend, her mother and her grandfather, officials said.

Derrick Charles, 32, was put to death by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville at 6:36 pm (2236 GMT), according to spokesman Jason Clark.

His last words before being injected with the lethal drugs were "I'm ready to go home," Clark said.

The US Supreme Court earlier on Tuesday denied a last minute appeal by the condemned man, allowing the execution to proceed.

Charles was just 19 at the time of the murders, which anti-death penalty activists had hoped would be taken into account in appeals that sought to spare his life at trial.

His attorneys also argued in vain that a family history of mental illness should have been taken into account.

Charles' execution comes as a growing number of Americans say they opposed capital punishment, and with an increasing number of US states making the decision to end the practice.

Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court is due next month to rule on the constitutionality of lethal injection -- the most common form of execution in the United States, but one that has become increasingly controversial.

In 2008, the court ruled that lethal injection was constitutional, but that was before recent shortages in the most commonly used drugs prompted state officials to come up with lethal medication cocktails that appeared to cause pain and suffering in inmates during some recent executions.

The execution was the seventh this year in Texas, the US state that has killed more Death Row inmates than any other.

It was the 14th execution this year in the United States.

http://news.yahoo.com/triple-murdere...012636918.html



This is my first post like this, I hope I did it right.

[Steve]

Why should people care if that arsehole suffered pain when they killed him, he sure as shit wasn't thinking of his victims well being.

[Lion-hearted Girl]

Originally Posted by TrueCrimeJunkie77 ↗

This is my first post like this, I hope I did it right.

Thanks for adding to the thread :D

I've been a little lazy with the updates....I will get back on it this week!

[Feirefiz]

Apart from being totally against capital punishment, this thread, and the foregoing threads, have ever been my favourites on DR! Very good work and thanks alot to all contributing!

[kellyhound]

Originally Posted by Lion-hearted Girl ↗

Death row inmate Kelly Gissendaner’s last meal could be huge
THE only woman on death row in the US state of Georgia has revealed her last meal request ahead of her impending execution.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner, who was sentenced to death in 1998 for orchestrating the murder of her husband Doug, has asked for a long list of food including corn bread with a side of buttermilk.

She has also requested two Burger King Whoppers with cheese; two large orders of fries; cherry vanilla ice cream; popcorn; a salad with boiled eggs, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots, cheese and Newman’s Own buttermilk dressing; and lemonade.

Gissendaner is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday week, in what will be the state’s first execution of a woman in 70 years.

If the execution goes ahead as planned she will become the 35th Georgia inmate put to death by lethal injection.

While her execution date has been set for February 25 at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, a last bid clemency hearing has been scheduled for February 24.

According to court documents, Gissendaner persuaded her then boyfriend Gregory Bruce Owen to kidnap her husband Douglas and kill him.

Gissendaner created the plot to collect on the couple’s life insurance policies, Associated Press reported and Owen testified against her in exchange for a life sentence.

It is not yet known whether her last meal request will be granted.

The last woman executed in Georgia was African American woman Lena Baker, who killed a white man who enslaved her.

The maid, who died in the electric chair in March 1945, was pardoned in 2005 after a jury found she acted in self-defence, broadcaster NPR reported.

A Georgia woman who was executed despite a plea for mercy from Pope Francis sang "Amazing Grace" until she was given a lethal injection, witnesses said.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner, who graduated from a theology program in prison, was put to death at 12:21 a.m. Wednesday after a flurry of last-minute appeals failed.

Gissendaner, who was sentenced to death for the 1997 stabbing murder of her husband at the hands of her lover, sobbed as she called the victim an "amazing man who died because of me."

She was the first woman executed in Georgia in 70 years and one of a handful of death-row inmates who were executed even though they did not physically partake in a murder.

The mother of three was nearly executed in February, but the lethal injection was abruptly called off because the chemicals appeared cloudy.

After a new execution date was set, Gissendaner, 47, convinced the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to reconsider her application for clemency.

In an extraordinary turn, Pope Francis -- who called for a global ban on the death penalty during his U.S. visit last week -- urged the board to spare her life.

"While not wishing to minimize the gravity of the crime for which Ms. Gissendander has been convicted, and while sympathizing with the victims, I nonetheless implore you, in consideration of the reasons that have been expressed to your board, to commute the sentence to one that would better express both justice and mercy," Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote on the pontiff's behalf.

Shortly thereafter, the board announced that it would not stop the execution.

The victim's family was split on whether Gissendaner should live or die: Her children appeared before the parole board to ask that their mom be spared the death chamber, but her husband's relatives said she did not deserve clemency.

"Kelly planned and executed Doug's murder. She targeted him and his death was intentional," Douglas Gissendaner's loved ones said in a written statement.

"In the last 18 years, our mission has been to seek justice for Doug's murder and to keep his memory alive. We have faith in our legal system and do believe that Kelly has been afforded every right that our legal system affords.

"As the murderer, she's been given more rights and opportunity over the last 18 years than she ever afforded to Doug who, again, is the victim here. She had no mercy, gave him no rights, no choices, nor the opportunity to live his life. His life was not hers to take."

In the hours before her death, Gissendaner pressed a number of appeals, arguing that it was not fair she got death while the lover who killed her husband got a life sentence. She also said the execution drugs might be defective, and that she had turned her life around and found religion while in prison.

She requested her final meal last week: cheese dip with chips, Texas fajita nachos and a diet frosted lemonade.

[Oswald2001]

Felonious women in time tend to conform to a type.

[hunterseeker]

Originally Posted by apache ↗

I just think its fucked up!. Anyways my point is with all the science and resources we have to prove guilt or innocence, we should really take initiative and fight to have an more justified prison system.

in my opinion, the jury system is the problem. i've watched enough true crime shows on tv to see that juries convict with no real evidence, like in this case, as often as not. people are mostly stupid! i would not want 12 idiots to decide if i live or die!

[xCellarxDoorx]

Dinkheller was a stupid fucking idiot. The second this lunatic went back near that Vehicle, Vietnam Vet or not He'd have been KIA'ed.