Kelly Gissendaner

Gissendaner's execution was scheduled for February 25, 2015, then after a weather delay for March 2, 2015, and then again one of the execution drugs was found to have been spoiled through improper storage.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, on behalf of Pope Francis, urged the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to spare Gissendaner's life. Gissendaner's clemency application to the Board of Pardons included support from a number of correctional officers that she met while in prison. Norman S. Fletcher, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, urged clemency because capital punishment was not proportional to her crime. The Georgia Republican Party’s general counsel and Republican Bob Barr also supported clemency.

The board again declined to commute her sentence on September 29, 2015. (Georgia is one of three US states in which the governor is not empowered to grant clemency to the condemned.)

Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison, the execution site

Gissendaner was scheduled to be executed on September 29, 2015, but was again delayed by appeals. She was finally executed via lethal injection at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, Georgia, on September 30 at 12:21 a.m.

Gissendaner cried, prayed, sang "Amazing Grace", said, "Bless you all. Tell the Gissendaners I am so, so sorry that an amazing man lost his life because of me. If I could take it all back, I would." She was the first woman executed in Georgia since 1945.