Parole Board to Meet to Consider Gissendaner Death Penalty Case

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles will meet Tuesday at 11 a.m. to ”consider supplemental information,” regarding the case of condemned murderer Kelly Renee Gissendaner, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening.

According to a news release, Board members have reviewed a second request received late last week from Gissendaner representatives, which asks them to reconsider the Board’s decision to deny clemency earlier this year.

“Following the meeting, the Board will determine whether to let stand the February 25, 2015, decision to deny clemency in the case, issue a stay of up to 90-days to further consider the case or the Board may grant clemency and commute the sentence to life with or without the possibility of parole,” according to the news release.

Gissendaner, condemned for masterminding the murder of her husband Douglas in Gwinnett in 1997, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m., Sept. 29, at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. If executed, she would be the first woman put to death in Georgia in 70 years, and the 35th inmate overall to die by lethal injection. She is Georgia’s only woman on death row.

Gissendaner was sentenced to death in 1998; her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied on Oct. 6, 2014.

In Georgia, the Parole Board has the sole constitutional authority to commute, or reduce, a death sentence to life with the possibility of parole or to life without the possibility of parole.

READ MORE

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