Hearing to see if suicidal inmate is sane enough to be executed

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By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A hearing is underway to determine if a condemned triple murderer is competent to be executed Friday in light of an attempt he made to kill himself Tuesday by slashing both arms and his neck.

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AP Photo/Georgia Department of Corrections Death row inmate Brandon Rhode, in a photo released by the Georgia Department of Corrections.

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Brandon Rhode was to have been executed Tuesday evening for murdering a Jones County father and his two children in 1998. But earlier in the day Tuesday the 31-year-old attempted suicide. The Georgia Supreme Court delayed Rhode’s lethal injection until 9 a.m. Friday to give his attorney time to pursue a mental competency claim.

The courts have said it is unconstitutional to execute someone who does not understand the reason for the punishment.

Judge Thomas Wilson is conducting the hearing at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison at Jackson, which is where Death Row and the execution chamber are located.

A mental health expert for Rhode will not be at the court hearing at the prison, however. Dr. Richard Adler was en route to Atlanta from Seattle at the same time as the hearing.

Attorney Brian Kammer said Adler could examine Rhode Thursday morning.

“The Georgia Supreme Court gave us this stay to make meaningful use of the competency procedures,” Kammer said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “This sort of rushing is unnecessary.”

Rhode and a partner, Daniel Lucas, were burglarizing the home of the Steven Moss family when 11-year-old Bryan Moss came home and confronted the pair with a baseball bat. Bryan was shot.

Moments later, 15-year-old Kristin Moss came home and she, too, was shot.

Their father, a 37-year-old trucking company executive, came into the house and Steven Moss was Rhode’s and Lucas’ third victim.

Lucas also was sentenced to die for the three murders

Kammer said Rhode had “organic brain damage” because his 16-year-old mother drank during the first five months of her pregnancy. That impaired his impulse control and his “ability to apply information and solve problems,” Kammer said, noting that Rhode also had been taking medication for depression.

The stress of the pending execution combined with his “mental deficiencies” make him incompetent to be executed under the Eighth Constitutional Amendment protection from cruel and unusual punishment, Kammer said.

Kammer said the night before the original execution date Rhode was “so terrified he was slurring his speech.”

A guard reportedly gave Rhode a razor on Friday, the day the state Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected his clemency plea, and that is what he used in his suicide attempt on Tuesday. At the time, Rhode was supposed to be under constant watch but he had lost so much blood from slashing his arms and his neck he was unconscious when officers found him.

“They should not have put him in the position to get implements for self harm," Kammer said. “They knew he has a history of suicide attempts [at least two]. They knew he has a history of mental problems. This guy should be watched carefully. I have good-faith grounds to worry that he’s not competent to be executed.”

The lawyers for the state argued that Rhode was not entitled to a competency hearing because he had not followed the legal procedures required first; that his lawyer show there is a basis for suspecting incompetency.

“This situation has evolved into a level of cruelty that is just plainly unconstitutional,” Kammer said before the hearing. “It’s become a kind of circus of pain. It is severe mental stress and mental terror has been inflicted on him and that’s not the way we’re supposed to treat people.”