Parole Board Green-Lights Execution of Kelly Gissendaner Despite Pope's Plea

[Purveyor]

Source: NBC News

by Tracy Connor, Dan Shepherd and Gabe Gutierrez
Sep 29 2015, 3:11 pm ET

Georgia's parole board declined Tuesday to commute the death sentence of Kelly Renee Gissendaner — even after Pope Francis called for a halt to her execution.

Gissendaner, a mother of three who was sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of her husband at the hands of her lover, is set to receive a lethal injection at 7 p.m. ET.

"This decision will not bring healing," said Cathy Zappa, an Episcopal priest and friend of Gissendaner.

Pope Francis, who called for a ban on the death penalty during his visit to the United States last week, asked the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to spare her life, through a letter written by a local archbishop.

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/pope-urges-halt-execution-georgia-woman-kelly-gissendaner-n435566

[mahannah]

1. The death penalty is both cruel and unusual.

[KansDem]

2. I don't understand this...

Gissendaner's application for clemency focuses on the fact that she received a harsher sentence than Greg Owen, the boyfriend who actually carried out the killing and is serving life without parole.

Why did her boyfriend and killer get life without parole and she gets the death penalty?

[Sake2Me]

4. I think it was in return for his testimony that convicted her

Which would make some kind of convoluted sense I suppose.

[REP]

5. Because she was the instigator of the murder, much like someone who hires a hit man

Even though she didn't pay Owen, she's the one who came up with the plan to kill her husband. Usually, the person who plans the murder gets the harsher sentence. Owen agreed to testify against her as well.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. He who plea bargains first

gets to live.

Instead of justice in America, we have:

[Uponthegears]

7. No excuses

Those who harbor support for the death penalty will strive mightily to present some defense for this barbarous act, but there is none. The fact is that, while it may salve our liberal sensibilities to believe that the criminal justice system would place greater responsibility on the person with the wherewithal to induce others to do their dirty work, it is almost always the trigger man who gets death. The victim's children begged for her life. The Pope begged for her life. Spouse murderers often get life. Kelly, however will die because the death penalty is both arbitrary and evil, because killing a female fends off accusations of gender bias, and because Georgia is a state beyond hope.

[Jake Stern]

8. While she shouldn't be executed, she should get no less than LWOP.

In most cases I've read about (even where the mastermind is a male), the mastermind receives a heavier sentence in large part because the killer often cooperates with the state in exchange for leniency.

California hasn't been able to prove Charles Manson physically killed any of the Cielo Drive/La Bianca victims yet he still sits in prison for their deaths.

Why? Because he was convicted of ordering their murders. This woman was convicted of ordering her husband's death.


Wish those who grouse about treating those that solicit murder as harshly or harsher than the actual killer would think on that for awhile.

[rocktivity]

11. Because he copped a plea and ratted her out?

WTOC.com:

At trial, prosecutors successfully showed that she recruited her then boyfriend Gregory Owen to kill her husband. Owen testified against Kelly Gissendaner as part of a plea deal that allowed him to avoid the death penalty.

Hooray for me...


rocktivity

[Yo_Mama]

17. She pressured him to do it - he wanted her to just get a divorce.

In essence, he was the weapon she used to kill her husband, and the father of at least one of her children, probably because she wanted the house, and I believe he may have had insurance that would cover it if he died.

And she apparently used Owen's love and desire for her to accomplish this.

I have no opinion about whether she should have been executed or not - I'm merely pointing out that she was the more culpable of the two. She did have a rotten childhood, so I think there are some mitigating factors to be argued for her.

There's a lot to be said for divorce courts!

[restorefreedom]

3. this really bothers me

not only because i oppose dp, but because of the apparent sexism imo. how many men have attempted, and in some cases succeeded, in killing their wives/partners who don't even get life or Lwp? and this woman, who conspired but did not actually kill, is getting death? even the guy she conspired with, who actually killed with his own hands, he is LWP. what the hell?

[question everything]

9. Same here

My spouse reply was: that's the South for you..

I don't know why the governor cannot issue last minute clemency.

[restorefreedom]

10. and given the issues they have had with the drugs

i can't believe they can do this at all

[24601]

14. I don't judge that the facts support your hypothesis. In fact, DP gender bias is far more likely to

result in males being sentenced to death. A woman being executed is a bigger news story because it's "man bites dog" rather than the norm that it's relatively rare to sentence a woman to death. This was Georgia's first execution of a women in 70 years.

You can find studies on this subject online fairly easily. Here's a sample with the URL up front:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1767508

Chivalry is Not Dead: Murder, Gender, and the Death Penalty


Steven F. Shatz
University of San Francisco - School of Law

Naomi R. Shatz
Zalkind Duncan and Bernstein LLP

February 19, 2011

Univ. of San Francisco Law Research Paper No. 2011-08
Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2012

"Chivalry - that set of values and code of conduct for the medieval knightly class - has long influenced American law, from Supreme Court decisions to substantive criminal law doctrines and the administration of criminal justice. The chivalrous knight was enjoined to seek honor and defend it through violence and, in a society which enforced strict gender roles, to show gallantry toward "ladies" of the same class, except for the women of the knight's own household, over whom he exercised complete authority. This article explores, for the first time, whether these chivalric values might explain sentencing outcomes in capital cases. The data for the article comes from our original study of 1299 first degree murder cases in California, whose death penalty scheme accords prosecutors and juries virtually unlimited discretion in making the death-selection decision. We examine sentencing outcomes for three particular types of murder where a "chivalry effect" might be expected - gang murders, rape murders and domestic violence murders. In cases involving single victims, the results were striking. In gang murders, the death sentence rate was less than one-tenth the overall death sentence rate. By contrast, in rape murder cases, the death sentence rate was nine times the overall death sentence rate. The death sentence rate for single-victim domestic violence murders was roughly 25% lower than the overall death sentence rate. We also examined, through this study and earlier California studies, more general data on gender disparities in death sentencing and found substantial gender-of-defendant and gender-of-victim disparities. Women guilty of capital murder are far less likely than men to be sentenced to death, and defendants who kill women are far more likely to be sentenced to death than defendants who kill men. We argue that all of these findings are consistent with chivalric norms, and we conclude that, in the prosecutors' decisions to seek death and juries' decisions to impose it, chivalry appears to be alive and well."

[Democat]

15. Sexism? How many men are put to death vs women?

If there is sexism, it probably goes opposite the way that you think.

[restorefreedom]

16. it occurred to me

in this particular case, since she got a harsher sentence than the man that actually did the crime. I wasn't making a blanket statement about the death penalty in general, although since more men commitment violent crime, it makes sense to think that more men are sentenced to death.

[Yo_Mama]

18. She's the one who thought it up and orchestrated it.

In this case, she was the more guilty.

If anything, sex bias runs the other way for the DP.

You can read about the case here, and before making allegations of sexism you probably should:
http://crime.about.com/od/womenondeathrow/fl/Profile-of-Kelly-Gissendaner-and-the-Murder-of-Her-Husband.htm

[restorefreedom]

19. i understand it was her idea

thanks for the link, but i don't plan to read the details of the crime.i don't believe for a minute that gissendaner was a paragon of virtue and goodness

i just hate the dp

[NonMetro]

12. If they didn't have the death penalty...

This would have been all over n the late 90's, she would have been locked up, and nobody would ever have heard of her again. Now, the state of Georgia will murder this 47 woman for a murder she committed 18 years ago when she was 29. What's the point? All it's going to do is cause more harm to her grown children. That's not justice. I call it just another murder.

[Eugene]

13. Georgia executes Kelly Gissendaner after Supreme Court denies stay requests

Source: Washington Post

Georgia executes Kelly Gissendaner after Supreme Court denies stay requests

By Mark Berman September 30 at 12:39 AM

The only woman on Georgia’s death row was executed by lethal injection early Wednesday morning following a series of legal challenges that delayed her execution by several hours.

Kelly Gissendaner, who was convicted of convincing her boyfriend to murder her husband, was the first woman executed in Georgia since World War II. Her execution was announced by corrections officials shortly before 12:30 a.m. local time.

Georgia had intended to execute Gissendaner earlier this year, but its two planned attempts were scrapped — one due to bad weather, the other after the execution drugs looked “cloudy” — and her execution was postponed until the fall.

On Tuesday afternoon, despite an appeal from Pope Francis, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied without explanation Gissendaner’s request for them to reconsider her case.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/09/29/georgia-considering-whether-the-state-will-execute-kelly-gissendaner-the-only-woman-on-its-death-row-as-pope-francis-asks-for-mercy/