ATLANTA — On Monday lawyers for a Georgia death row inmate whose execution was postponed because of a problem with the lethal injection drug called for a transparent and meaningful investigation into the issue.
Kelly Gissendaner was scheduled for execution at 7 p.m. on March 2. Corrections officials told reporters around 11 p.m. that they were postponing the execution “out of an abundance of caution” because the lethal injection drug appeared “cloudy.” The next day, the Department of Corrections announced it was temporarily suspending executions until it could more carefully analyze the drug.
“A self-investigation with opaque results is unacceptable,” Gissendaner’s lawyers wrote in a complaint filed in federal court in Atlanta.
Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens had no comment on the complaint, spokeswoman Lauren Kane said in an email.
Between the time her scheduled execution was called off and the time when corrections officials announced they were suspending all executions, Gissendaner suffered 13 hours of anxiety and fear about when and how the state might try to execute her, her lawyers argued. That constitutes “unconstitutional torment and uncertainty,” they wrote.