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Kelly Gissendaner, prison theology studies graduate, executed in Georgia

Despite pleas by Pope Francis, theologian Jürgen Moltmann, pastors, professors, and fellow inmates, Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 47, was executed by the state of Georgia on September 30.

Gissendaner had been convicted of conspiring with her then-boyfriend, who killed her husband, Douglas Gissendaner, in 1997.

“I will never understand how I let myself fall into such evil, but I have learned first-hand that no one, not even me, is beyond redemption through God’s grace and mercy,” she wrote in her clemency application, as quoted by the Huffington Post.