By Bob Allen
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied a clemency petition Sept. 29 for Kelly Gissendaner, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection tonight for plotting her husband’s murder in 1997.
The parole board met Tuesday morning to reconsider its decision to deny clemency in February, in light of new arguments by her lawyers that her sentence was unjustly disproportionate to the life with possible parole sentence given to her accomplice, who actually committed the murder while she was not even at the scene.
Gissendaner was willing to enter a plea to a parolable life sentence, the petition argued, but her attorney convinced her that an acquittal was quite possible and that even if convicted she would probably be sentenced to life with parole.
The board had options of letting her death sentence stand, staying the decision 90 days for further review or commuting the sentence to life with or without parole.
The parole board green-lighted tonight’s execution despite a plea by Pope Francis to halt her execution.
Monday night supporters held a prayer vigil outside the State Capitol as the parole board awaited to hear the last-minute pitch to save her life. Speakers included Nikki Roberts, one of many formerly incarcerated women who credit Gissendaner’s counsel and support with helping them get through thoughts of suicide. She was accompanied by several of her fellow members at Atlanta’s Park Avenue Baptist Church, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-affiliated congregation with staff including CBF field personnel Trey and Jennifer Lyon.
CBF Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter was among some 500 Georgia faith leaders who signed a full-page ad in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asking that Gissendaner’s life be spared.
Gissendaner has received strong support from Atlanta-area clergy, many who know of her through contact with a prison theology program sponsored by a consortium including Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, one of CBF’s partner schools. Melissa Browning, visiting assistant professor of contextual ministry at McAfee, is an organizer of #kellyonmymind campaign supporting her clemency plea.
Gissendaner was valedictorian of her class, and while there befriended Jürgen Moltmann, a German theologian who identified with her because of his own experience following World War II as a prisoner of war.
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