State officials have granted a new clemency hearing for the lone woman on Georgia’s death row, hours after a federal judge declined an emergency request to temporarily halt her execution over concerns about the lethal injection drugs the state plans to use.

The Georgia board of pardons and paroles – the only entity with the authority to commute a death sentence – said in a news release on Monday that it will hold the hearing at 11 Tuesday morning before Kelly Renee Gissendaner’s scheduled 7pm execution.

Susan Casey, a lawyer for Gissendaner, said the board set the new hearing after Gissendaner’s oldest son asked to speak to the board members. Her other two children had already asked the board to spare their mother’s life at a hearing earlier this year.

Lawyers for Gissendaner had earlier been denied a request by US district court judge, Thomas Thrash to stay the execution and give himself time to rule on their request to reconsider his dismissal of a complaint they filed in March. Gissendaner’s lawyers planned to appeal against Monday’s ruling to the 11th US circuit court of appeals.



Gissendaner was convicted of the murder in February 1997 of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner. An earlier attempt to execute her in March was called off after she was already in the execution chamber over concerns that the single drug to be used appeared cloudy. Lawyers for Gissendaner argue that the 13 hours she spent not knowing whether she would be executed immediately – or what drug would be used to kill her – amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

If the execution happens, Gissendaner will be the first woman executed by the state in 70 years. Prosecutors said she conspired with her lover, Gregory Owen, who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death. Owen, who took a plea deal and testified against Gissendaner, is serving a life sentence and he will be eligible for parole in 2022.



Gissendaner’s supporters last week released a video featuring two of her three children. Dakota and Kayla Gissendaner talk in the video about overcoming their intense anger at their mother and the difficult journey to forgiving her.

“Forgiving our mother was the best way to truly honor our dad’s memory,” Dakota Gissendaner, who was five when his father died, said in the video.

“We’ve lost our dad,” said Kayla Gissendaner, who was seven at the time. “We can’t imagine losing our mom too.”

Georgia corrections officials temporarily suspended executions in the state until a drug analysis on the “cloudy” sample could be done. In April, they released lab reports, a sworn statement from a pharmacological expert hired by the state and a short video showing a syringe of clear liquid with chunks of a white solid floating in the solution.

Corrections officials have said the most likely cause of the formation of solids in the compounded pentobarbital was shipping and storage at a temperature that was too cold, but they noted that storage at a low temperature does not always cause pentobarbital to precipitate.

The department of corrections does not currently have pentobarbital on hand but will obtain it before the execution date, spokeswoman Gwendolyn Hogan said in an email. She did not immediately return phone messages on Monday and did not respond when asked several times by email whether the drug would come from the same compounding pharmacy that provided the problematic pentobarbital earlier this year.

Gissendaner’s lawyers had filed a lawsuit in March saying the period of uncertainty after her execution was postponed, not knowing whether the state would try to proceed again before the execution window expired and what drugs it might use, amounted to “unconstitutional torment and uncertainty”. They also raised questions about the quality of the lethal injection drug the state would be able to get in the future.

Gissendaner’s execution has been scheduled for 7pm on Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson. She has requested a last meal of cheese dip with chips, Texas fajita nachos and a diet frosted lemonade.