Kelly Renee Gissendaner was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday but the execution was delayed by three appeals to state and US supreme court

The Georgia board of pardons and paroles has denied clemency for the lone woman on the state’s death row after hearing requests to spare her life from her children and from the Vatican.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner was scheduled to die by lethal injection sometime after 7pm at the state prison in Jackson. Gissendaner, 47, was convicted of murder in the February 1997 slaying of her husband. She conspired with her lover, who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death.

The supreme court of Georgia denied a stay of execution for Gissendaner shortly after the US supreme court denied her application for a stay of execution on Tuesday evening.

The US supreme court rejected a second appeal shortly before 11pm and then a third at 11.35pm, Associated Press said.



<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>The board, which is the only entity in Georgia authorized to commute a death sentence, met on Tuesday to hear from her oldest son, Brandon, who had remained silent when his two siblings addressed the board earlier this year. The board released a statement saying it was standing by its February decision denying clemency and did not give any reason.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Death row inmate Kelly Renee Gissendaner. Photograph: Reuters

The board also received a letter on behalf of Pope Francis urging them not to allow Gissendaner’s execution, the first since the pope’s address to the US Congress last week in which he called on the United States to abolish the death penalty. There are five other executions scheduled over the next nine days across the US, including that of Richard Glossip in Oklahoma, where a nun, Sister Helen Prejean, has been urging the state to hear new evidence of his possible innocence.

“While not wishing to minimize the gravity of the crime for which Ms Gissendaner 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 behalf of the pope.



Gissendaner’s execution “follows up so directly on what he just recommended last Thursday, so it’s a first response to a longstanding concern that the holy see and the bishops of the United States have had”, Wilton D Gregory, the archbishop of Atlanta, told a press conference on Tuesday.



Gissendaner was previously scheduled for execution on 25 February, but that was delayed because of a threat of winter weather. Her execution was reset for 2 March, but corrections officials postponed that execution “out of an abundance of caution” because the execution drug appeared “cloudy”.



The parole board declined to spare Gissendaner’s life after a clemency hearing in February. Her lawyers asked the board to reconsider its decision before the second execution date, but the board stood by its decision to deny clemency.

Gissendaner’s lawyers last Thursday submitted a second request to reconsider the denial of clemency. The parole board said on Monday that its members have thoroughly reviewed that request. The board said the meeting on Tuesday would allow it to gather additional information from representatives for Gissendaner.

In the request for reconsideration, Gissendaner’s lawyers cite a statement from former Georgia supreme court chief justice Norman Fletcher, who argues that Gissendaner’s death sentence is not proportionate to her role in the crime. Her lover, Gregory Owen, who did the killing, is serving a life prison sentence and will become eligible for parole in 2022.



Fletcher said he has now decided he was wrong in voting to deny Gissendaner’s appeal in 2000 when he sat on the state supreme court, the statement says. He also notes that Georgia has not executed a person who didn’t actually carry out a killing since the US supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Gissendaner’s lawyers also argue she was a seriously damaged woman, has undergone a spiritual transformation while in prison and has been a model prisoner who has shown remorse and provided hope to other inmates in their personal struggles. The new request for reconsideration includes testimony from several women who were locked up as teens and who said Gissendaner counselled them through moments when they felt scared, lost or on the verge of giving up hope.

Two of her three children, Dakota and Kayla, previously addressed the board and earlier this month released a video pleading for their mother’s life to be spared. They detailed their own tough journeys to forgiving her and said they would suffer terribly from having a second parent taken from them.

Douglas Gissendaner’s family said in a statement released on Monday that he is the victim and Kelly Gissendaner received an appropriate sentence.

“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,” the statement says. “She had no mercy, gave him no rights, no choices, nor the opportunity to live his life.”

Kelly Gissendaner repeatedly pushed Owen in late 1996 to kill her husband rather than just divorcing him as Owen suggested, prosecutors have said. Acting on her instructions, Owen ambushed Douglas Gissendaner at Gissendaner’s home, forced him to drive to a remote area and stabbed him multiple times, prosecutors said.

Investigators looking into the killing zeroed in on Owen once they learned of his affair with Kelly Gissendaner. He initially denied involvement but eventually confessed and implicated Kelly Gissendaner.

Gissendaner still has legal challenges pending before the 11th US circuit court of appeals and the US supreme court.