Weather delays Ga. woman’s execution

Appeals are exhausted, but wait of victim’s family extended again.

Kelly Gissendaner’s execution was rescheduled for Monday,

The family of Doug Gissendaner believed Wednesday morning they were near the end of their years of heartbreak as only hours remained before his former wife would be put to death for his murder 17 years ago.

But just two hours after the Parole Board announced it had rejected Kelly Gissendaner’s plea for clemency, the Department of Corrections told the public that she would not be put to death at 7 that evening as scheduled.

A winter storm threatened, so the first execution of a woman in Georgia since 1945 was moved to 7 p.m. Monday.

DOC said only that the day and time was changed because of “scheduling issues.” Officials did not respond to emails or calls asking why the weather would affect an execution, since a prison is staffed all the time.

The state Board of Pardons and Paroles had spent seven hours Tuesday with those who wanted Gissendaner spared and those who wanted her sentence carried out. It did not explain its decision to turn down her plea.

There are no viable appeals left.

“This has been a long, hard, heartbreaking road for us,” Douglas Gissendaner’s parents and two sisters wrote in a statement released Wednesday. “Now that this chapter in this nightmare is over, Doug would want us, and all of the people who loved him, to find peace, to remember all the happy times and (to) cherish memories we have of him.

Gissendaner Also inside

Clemency process shrouded in secrecy,

Kelly Renee Gissendaner was sentenced to death for planning her husband’s 1997 murder with her boyfriend.