(TW: Violence, Abuse, Death, Emotional)
She was born into a poor cotton-farming family, and her parents often drank, did speed, and fought. Their marriage ended after four years, and her mother remarried just eight days later. Her new stepfather would lock her and her siblings in their rooms while he beat their mother and often choked her. Her mother would join her stepfather in beating her with belts, flyswatters, and their bare hands. She was molested by multiple men throughout her childhood, including her stepfather.
When she entered high school, her mother divorced her stepfather and moved the family to a small town outside of Athens, Georgia. While other kids cheered on the high school football team, she worked the takeout window at the nearest McDonald’s. During her senior prom, she was date raped. Nine months later, she gave birth to her first son.
She married a boy from high school a few months after her son’s birth. The marriage lasted only six weeks, cut short by her biological father chasing her new husband with a gun. A single mother and only nineteen, she moved back in with her mother. She couldn’t remain employed and was arrested for shoplifting. Her father physically abused her, and she turned to drinking to numb the pain.
She married Doug Gissendaner in 1989; she was four months pregnant, and entering her second marriage in two years. The two lost their jobs, and married life was rocky, especially while Doug was away in the Army to provide for his expectant wife. Upon his return in 1993, they promptly divorced, only to be remarried in 1995. 1996 she had given birth to three more children: two more sons and a daughter. Her life was increasingly unstable, and in addition to her marriage with Doug, she saw her former lover, Greg Owen.
On February 8, 1997, she reported Doug Gissendaner was missing. 12 days later, his body was found.
She told police that Greg Owen had threatened to kill Doug upon finding out that they were back together. At first, he refused to answer any questions, but when presented with a plea bargain that promised life with parole after 25 years if he testified against her, he cracked. He admitted that he had killed Doug, but maintained that it was her plan; her refused a peal deal and was sentenced to death by a Gwinnet County jury.
She was the only female death row inmate in her Georgia prison; housed in the segregated part of the jail for the mentally ill and the suicidal. She whispered encouragement through the bars to her fellow inmates who were struggling, offering prayers and reciting scripture after graduating from a theology program behind bars. She calmed inconsolable prisoners with kind words. She even appeased a woman who had tried to hang herself and caught her room on fire, saying, “People love you. God loves you.”
The women she helped behind bars formed a group upon release called The Struggle Sisters, whose sole purpose was to advocate for her life, even begging former Governor Nathan Deal to his face outside of her denied clemency hearing. They all echoed a similar statement to former inmate Kara Stevens: “She is not the same person she was 18 years ago.”
Even Pope Francis issued a statement urging the clemency board to save her life, but to no avail.
She was scheduled for execution on February 25, 2015; it was cancelled due to inclement weather conditions. On March 10, she was again told she was to die, only for officials to find problems with the lethal injection drugs.
Finally, on September 29, 2015, she was led to the death chamber, this time for her sentence to be carried out. She sobbed on the table where she was to die, calling Doug an “amazing man who died because of me”. She sang “Amazing Grace” until the drugs took effect.
She is Kelly Gissendaner. She lost her life for the sake of justice.