Georgia plans to execute woman next week, first since 1945

Gissendaner was initially scheduled to be executed on March 2nd of this year, but state officials called it off at the last minute “out of an abundance of caution”, because the lethal injection drug they planned on using appeared “cloudy”.

According to prosecutors, Gissendaner recruited her then boyfriend to murder her husband, Douglas Gissendaner, who was stabbed to death in a desolate area in suburban Atlanta after being abducted from his home.

The family has created a hashtag #kellyonmymind and a website kellyonmymind.com to help advocate for commutation of her sentence and her life spared.

‘Prior to the execution the drugs were sent to an independent lab for testing of potency, ‘ a Department of Corrections spokesman told the Gwinnett Daily Post.

If executed, she would be the first woman put to death in Georgia in 70 years.

Douglas Gissendaner was killed in February 1997 by Greg Owen, who was having an affair with Gissendaner at the time.

“After viewing a video of the solution and learning about the shipment and storage of the solution, my assessment of the formulation indicates that pentobarbital had precipitated or fallen out of solution”, University of Georgia College of Pharmacy professor Jason Zastre wrote in a sworn statement released by the department. A follow-up test by the state found that the drug had been shipped and stored below the required temperature for it to be effective. Another possible cause could be that the pharmaceutical solvent used to dissolve pentobarbital sodium during the compounding process could have either absorbed some water or evaporated during preparation, he wrote. Both started and ended as clear liquid with no solids.

It’s actually the second time her execution has been in some way delayed.

Her lawyers claimed that the state couldn’t adequately protect her Eighth Amendment rights, which bans cruel and unusual punishment.

Kelly Gissendaner, death row inmate, celebrates her graduation from a prison theology program in 2011.

In the interim, a federal lawsuit challening her execution was pending and last month the judge dismissed it.