What’s Current: Kelly Gissendaner is executed; man who actually carried out the killing becomes eligible for parole in 2022

Kelly Gissendaner during her murder trial in Lawrenceville, Ga. in 1998. Gissendaner was convicted of murder in the February 1997 slaying of her husband. She conspired with her lover, who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death.(Richard Fowlkes/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/The Associated Press)
Kelly Gissendaner during her murder trial in 1998. (Richard Fowlkes/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/The Associated Press)

Kelly Gissendaner, Georgia death row inmate, executed. She was sentenced to death for plotting to murder her husband with her then boyfriend. The man who actually committed the murder only received a life sentence with the option for parole in 2022. As Gissendaner’s writ of certiorari points out, she is the only person to be executed in the era of the modern death penalty who was not present at the time the victim was killed. That’s right. No man has ever been sentenced to death for the crime this woman committed.

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Susan Cox

Susan Cox is a feminist writer and academic living in the United States. She teaches in Philosophy.