Death row inmate Kelly Renee Gissendaner is seen in an undated picture from the Georgia Department of Corrections. Gissendaner, sent to Georgia's death row for the murder of her husband, is due to die by lethal injection on February 24, 2015, the first time in 70 years the state would execute a female prisoner.HANDOUT/Reuters
The only woman on Georgia's death row asked a state board to "bestow mercy" and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for a delay, with hours left before her execution Monday for her husband's murder.
Earlier Monday, a federal appeals court in Atlanta rejected her lawyers' request to halt her execution on the grounds that Georgia's lethal injection procedures aren't transparent enough to allow a legal challenge.
Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 7 p.m. Monday at the state prison for the 1997 murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner.
Gissendaner would be the first woman executed in Georgia since 1945 and only the 16th woman put to death nationwide since the Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to resume in 1976.
Prosecutors said she plotted her husband's stabbing death with her boyfriend, Gregory Owen. Owen pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.
Gissendaner's lawyers note that the parole board already heard from many people testifying about her faith and remorse at a hearing last week before denying her clemency.
But, her lawyers argue, the board did not hear from many Department of Corrections employees whose perspective "would have left no doubt that a grant of clemency is supported in this case."
The most important witness the board did not hear from is Kathy Seabolt, who served as her warden for six years. Seabolt could testify that former parole board chair James Donald promised Gissendaner would receive clemency, her lawyers wrote.
Each time the topic came up in conversations between Donald and Seabolt, "Donald reiterated his statement that Ms. Gissendaner did not need to worry about clemency as it was a foregone conclusion," they wrote.
Gissendaner's lawyers also urged the parole board to subpoena some other corrections employees so they can testify without fear of retaliation.
Although department rules allow employees to speak to lawyers for capital clemency proceedings, the reality is less clear, Gissendaner's lawyers wrote. Some employees had said they would testify and provide written statements on Gissendaner's behalf, but changed their minds after getting a memo from the new warden, who succeeded Seabolt last year.
"Under no circumstances are you to discuss this with people outside the institution. Staff should also be careful what is said to other inmates and personal feelings are to be suppressed," Kathleen Kennedy wrote on Jan. 29 as she notified staff of the likelihood of the upcoming execution.
Gissendaner's lawyers also urged the board to consider that before trial, she had been offered the same plea deal as Owen – life in prison with an agreement not to seek parole for 25 years.
Owen, who is the one who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death, took the deal and testified for the prosecution. Gissendaner balked at the parole agreement and took her lawyer's advice to go to trial.
Douglas Gissendaner's parents and sisters want her to be executed, but two of Kelly and Douglas' three children have asked the parole board to spare her life, the lawyers wrote.