ATLANTA (AP) — The only woman on Georgia's death row is set to be executed Monday. 
 
 Kelly Renee Gissendaner, who's 46, is set to die at 7 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson after the execution was delayed last week. 
 
 Gissendaner was convicted of murder in the February 1997 stabbing death of her husband. Prosecutors said she plotted his death with her boyfriend, Gregory Owen. Owen pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence. 
 
 If Gissendaner's execution happens, she'll be the first woman executed in Georgia since 1945 and only the 16th woman put to death nationwide since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume. 
 
 She was originally set to be executed last Wednesday, but the Department of Corrections postponed her execution because of projected winter weather conditions. ||||| In October 2011, Professor Moltmann, in Atlanta to lecture at Emory, asked Professor McBride if he could visit Ms. Gissendaner in prison. His visit coincided with a graduation ceremony for the 10 or so theology students at the prison, and he agreed to give a commencement address. 
 
 After the ceremony, “the three of us sat together,” Professor McBride recalled. “They talked about their mutual experience in prison, and about how they both had time in the military” — a German soldier in World War II, Professor Moltmann was a prisoner of war afterward. “They talked about what it was like to read the Bible in prison.” 
 
 Ms. Gissendaner began her studies while at Metro State Prison, near Atlanta. At first, she studied with her classmates. But halfway through her yearlong program, a new prison administration would not let her out of her cell for coursework. To continue her studies, her teachers would visit her. 
 
 “We came to her and taught theology through the bars of her cell,” Professor McBride said. “So I had one-on-one time with her for about two hours, every Friday, for six months.” 
 
 Metro closed, and Ms. Gissendaner was moved to Lee Arrendale State Prison, in Habersham County, where she was allowed to sit with her teachers in a visiting room. Professor McBride soon moved to Iowa. In a letter dated Feb. 10, 2012, Professor Moltmann wrote that he was concerned, not having heard from Ms. Gissendaner “for quite a while.” 
 
 “Dear Kelly,” he wrote, “Friede sei mit dir” — peace be with you. He was enjoying “Journey of Hope by Faith,” the devotional book she had written as a final project for her theology certificate; it gave him “much inspiration.” 
 
 “Can you continue your theological studies?” he asked. “Who is in charge now since Jenny left? I am still studying theology with 85 years and discover new ideas. It is an adventure of ideas, not only faith. Theology is to love God with your mind.” ||||| For death penalty watchers, all eyes will be on Georgia today - much as they have been throughout the grim history of the American death penalty - as the state plans to execute 46-year-old Kelly Renee Gissendaner. Georgia is the state where the Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia created a de facto moratorium to the death penalty in 1972, and also where Gregg v Georgia brought the death penalty back to life in 1976. 
 
 Gissendaner’s clemency appeal was rejected last week, despite “detailed testimony from inmates and former wardens” on her behalf. Her last petition to the Supreme Court was denied in October. According to the NAACP, she stands to be the 15th woman put to death by the government since 1976. 
 
 In the same period, 1,368 men have been executed. While men commit far more violent crimes than women, there is a disquieting history of racial and gender dynamics to who is sentenced to the death penalty after being convicted for the same crimes. This disparate impact was at issue in Furman v. Georgia. In his majority opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall made note of: 
 
 overwhelming evidence that the death penalty is employed against men and not women. Only 32 women have been executed since 1930, while 3,827 men have met a similar fate. It is difficult to understand why women have received such favored treatment since the purposes allegedly served by capital punishment seemingly are applicable to both sexes. 
 
 That purpose, ostensibly though easily refutable, is that the death penalty should prevent crime. But if that were the case, following the death penalty’s lopsided application towards men, it would mean men would be deterred from committing about 85 percent of all homicides and women would be running rampant. 
 
 The five member majority of Furman ruled effectively, if temporarily, to end capital punishment because of “the discretion of judges and juries in imposing the death penalty” which enable it “to be selectively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he is poor and despised, and lacking political clout.” 
 
 Though the Furman case was argued mostly around William Henry Furman’s inability to get a fair capital trial as a poor black man, Marshall noted the disparate impact of the death penalty on men, and the court ruled that “In a Nation committed to equal protection of the laws there is no permissible ‘caste’ aspect of law enforcement.” 
 
 The disparate impact of the Furman case did not only stop executions of blacks and the poor in Georgia; it ended them for all Americans. 
 
 That was, until Utah upstaged Georgia with the first post-Gregg execution in 1977, of Gary Gilmore by firing squad. Indeed, Utah may again upstage Georgia’s execution news, as its house of representatives just voted to resurrect firing squads. 
 
 Much has been made of Gissendaner’s conversion to Christianity and her relationship with prominent German theologian Jürgen Moltmann. But it’s worth noting Gissendaner’s rare execution as a woman. That women are far less likely to face execution than men does not demonstrate a “men’s rights” defense of male murders; but the aberration does highlight an unjustly applied law which should be tossed out for everyone. 
 
 We know that men, the mentally ill, and the poor are more likely to wind up on death row. A 2011 Stanford Law School report found that, “Minority defendants who murder white victims are three times as likely to receive a death sentence as white defendants who murder white victims.” For the state and its agents who literally execute its death penalty, the convicted must be considered a monster. It is arguably harder to flip the switch on the electric chair when that “monster” is gendered female. And, though it’s hard to say with such a small sample, it seems harder to see a woman enough as a monster to actually kill her - that is, unless she is lesbian, black, poor or all three. 
 
 The answer, of course, is not to execute more people. The answer is that the state of Georgia - and all states, and the federal US government - should stop executing everyone, for it is a legal, financial and moral failure that does not deter the crimes it professes to. While not technically a crime in America, the death penalty is a mortal injustice - and one that must be stopped. 
 
 
 
 Updated on 3 March 2014: Gissendaner’s execution was temporarily halted last night because the lethal injection drug appeared “cloudy”. 
 

– Georgia is preparing to execute a woman for the first time since 1945. Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, is scheduled to be put to death tonight, an event that would make her the 16th woman to be executed since 1976, the AP reports; that's when the Supreme Court ended a halt on the practice. During the same period, according to the NAACP, "1,368 men have been executed," writes Steven Thrasher in the Guardian. He notes that Gissendaner, convicted in the 1997 murder of her husband, saw her final Supreme Court petition denied in October and lost a clemency appeal last week—even testimony from a man the New York Times calls "one of the world's most prominent theologians" couldn't save her. During her time in prison, Gissendaner developed a strong interest in theology, studying in a prisoner program conducted by divinity schools around Atlanta. Her work drew her to German theologian Jürgen Moltmann. "She wrote to him, and a friendship developed," says one of her teachers. He ended up testifying in the clemency effort last week, alongside her professors and other inmates whom Gissendaner herself has helped with spiritual matters. "I have found her very sensitive, and not a monster, as the newspapers depicted her," Moltmann tells the Times. "She has changed her mind, and her life." Winter weather delayed her scheduled execution on Wednesday; she requested as her last meal two Burger King Whoppers, salad, fries, and cornbread, WXIA adds.