Weeping Husband-Killer Becomes First Woman in 70 Years to be Executed in Georgia (Photos)

 

The first woman to be executed in Georgia for 70 years, Kelly Renee Gissendaner, has been killed by lethal injection after her legal appeals were rejected and a plea by the Pope ignored.

 

She was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 12.21am on Wednesday after court delays left the 47-year-old sitting in a holding room between her cell and the execution gurney for several hours.

 

 

Gissendaner, who was scheduled to be executed on Tuesday evening at the state prison in Jackson, was convicted of murder in the February 1997 slaying of her husband. She conspired with her lover, who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death.

 

She sang Amazing Grace all they way through the injection, a witness told WXIS, and asked those who were there to tell her children she died singing the song.

 

 

Gissendaner called Douglas Gissendaner an 'amazing man who died because of me', and was very emotional and sobbing in the moments leading up to her death, the witness said, adding that she said she was sorry and prayed before dying.

 

Her lawyers had filed three appeals with the US Supreme Court in hopes of having her execution overturned. All three were denied. The Georgia Supreme Court also denied a stay of execution.

 

 

Attorney Susan Casey said that Gissendaner's three children are 'heartbroken' with the outcome of the appeals.  

 

'We asked the board for an additional 24 hours so they could visit their mother. That was refused.'  she told CNN. 

 

Gissendaner had simple but touching words for her three children in the hours leading up to her scheduled execution: 'I love you, I love you, I love you, and I'm so proud of you'. 

 

 

Her son, Dakota Brookshire, thanked his friends and family on Facebook for their support after he heard the news about his mother. 

 

 

 

Source: Dailymail