By C1 Staff
ATLANTA — Attorneys for Kelly Gissendaner, Georgia’s only female death row inmate, have sued the Department of Corrections for an investigation into the postponement of Gissendaner’s execution and the secrecy that has surrounded it.
Originally to be executed February 25, her execution was first postponed due to a snow storm. Gissendaner’s execution was rescheduled for March 2, only to be postponed again when the drugs for her lethal injection appeared “cloudy.”
The Gwinnett Daily Post reports that Gissendaner’s attorneys received a phone call the night of March 2, alerting them that the execution would not go forward due to the strange appearance of the drugs. They were reportedly told by Sabrina Graham, a senior attorney general representing the DOC, that the state “would need another day to obtain new drugs and ‘a day or two’ to have them tested.”
Ten minutes later, after they had notified Gissendaner that she would not be executed that day, the attorneys received a second call telling them “not to go anywhere.”
“…Defendants had now said they were no longer certain which drugs they had examined – a ‘batch’ obtained ‘this week’ or one obtained the week before – and were now considering proceeding with Ms. Gissendaner’s execution in short order,” the suit reads.
Fourteen minutes later, the execution was called off once more.
“Ms. Gissendaner then endured thirteen hours of anxiety and fear as to when and how Defendants might try to execute her while they fidgeted as to whether they could manage it before her warrant period expired.”
The suit also takes on the state’s execution procedures, using the recent ‘botched’ executions of Clayton Lockett and Michael Lee Wilson as examples to question the DOC’s use of compounding pharmacies to obtain pentobarbital.
A pharmacist and consultant referenced in the suit stated that compounded drugs come with “foreseeable risks” of being “sub-standard in a manner that would cause severe pain upon or shortly after injection.” The pharmacist also stated that cloudiness could be an indication of drugs that are “sub-potent, expired, contaminated, contain unintended additives, or will contain a substantial level of particulates.”
The suit states that there should be no secrecy surrounding the details of Georgia executions, whether that be about the source of the drugs, or the qualifications of those carrying out the procedure.
The DOC declined to comment.