Clemency denied, Rhode scheduled for execution Tuesday

By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Clemency was denied Friday to a Georgia man condemned for a 1998 triple murder.

The relatives and supporters of Brandon Joseph Rhode asked the state Board of Pardons and Paroles for mercy five days before he is scheduled to die by lethal injection.

The board voted Friday to deny clemency.

Rhode was not at the board appointment, but his supporters had private meeting Friday morning. Only the courts or the Pardons and Paroles Board can stop an execution in Georgia.

Rhode would be the 25th person in Georgia to die by lethal injection and the 48th the state has executed since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1973.

Rhode's execution is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Rhode, born in 1979, and a partner, did not set out to commit murder when they broke into the Jones County house of Steven and Gerri Ann Moss on April 23, 1998, according to trial testimony.

Their plan was to commit a burglary.

But 11-year-old Bryan was murdered when he came home from school, then his 15-year-old sister, Kristin, and then their 37-year-old father, Steven Moss.

According to testimony, Rhode and Daniel Lucas made two trips to the Moss house that day. The first time they left without taking anything because the alarm went off.

They came back later that day.

Bryan Moss was the first to come home.

The boy could see the two men through a front window as they were ransacking the house. The boy, armed with a baseball bat, came in through the back, but he was subdued by Rhode and Lucas, who were armed.

They put him in a chair as they discussed what to do with him. They were still talking about their options when Lucas shot the boy in the shoulder.

Moments later, Kristin Moss was seen coming up to the house, so Lucas took Bryan to a back bedroom while Rhode waited for the boy’s sister.

Rhode put her in the same chair and shot the teenager twice.

Simultaneously, Lucas, in the back with Bryan, shot the boy again.

Rhode shot and killed their father when he got to the house.

Then the partners shot the Moss siblings several more times to be certain they were dead.

Lucas, born in 1978, is also on death row for the murders.