Georgia executes first woman in 70 years

Kelly Gissendaner, 47, was executed at 12:21 a.m. (0441 GMT) on Wednesday, becoming the first woman to be put to death in Georgia in 70 years and the 16th in the United States since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.

Gissendaner was sentenced to death for conspiring to kill her husband in 1997. Her former lover, Gregory Owen, whom she convinced to do the killing, received a life sentence and will be eligible for parole in 2022.

The execution went ahead despite multiple appeals by her lawyers to the US Supreme Court, Georgia Supreme Court and the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles, which has the authority to stay executions.

A letter from Pope Francis, who finished up a six-day tour of the US on Sunday and urged Congress to abolish the death penalty, also failed to persuade state authorities to stay the execution.

"Please be assured of my prayers as you consider this request by Pope Francis for what I believe would be a just act of clemency," the Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the pope's US representative, wrote in a letter to the Board.

In a Tuesday appeal decision, the board did not say why it had decided to go ahead with the execution.

Two of Gissendaner's three children also pleaded for a stay of execution.

Gissendaner's lawyers argued their client's exemplary behavior in prison and remorse were enough to grant a stay of execution. They also argued that the punishment was disproportionate to the crime.

Those arguments were backed up by former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher, who said in a letter to the parole board that a previous review of Gissendaner's case when he was a judge was "deeply flawed" and the punishment was disproportionate to the crime.

"The State of Georgia has not executed a person who did not commit the actual killing since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976," he wrote. "There is a reason for this. Kelly Gissendaner should not be the first."

Former State Corrections Deputy Director Vanessa O'Donnell, who was also the warden at the prison where Gissendaner was incarcerated, also backed a stay of execution.

O'Donnell told the Board that Gissendaner's life should be spared because of her "exceptional prison adjustment, her role in the crime as compared with her co-defendant who is serving a life sentence, her remorse, and the pleas of the Gissendaner children."

O'Donnell noted that Gissendaner had "reached out to other inmates at their lowest ebb of despair and helped them to recognize their worth and to see a path out of prison."

cw/sms (AFP, AP, Reuters)