Bryan Moss was a brave 11-year-old boy who armed himself with an aluminum baseball bat to defend his home against the two men ransacking it.
But they had guns, and soon the boy was dead.
His 15-year-old sister, Kristin Moss, was just moments behind her brother, getting off the school bus on April 23, 1998. Seconds after walking into her house, Kristin was tied to a chair and, like Bryan, was shot and killed.
The children’s father, home from work early, was shot and left to die at his daughter’s feet.
One of the killers, Brandon Rhode, was executed for the three Jones County murders on Sept. 27, 2010.
Now his partner, Daniel Anthony Lucas, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Wednesday.
If Lucas is put to death, he will be the fifth person Georgia has executed in less than three months. Only two other times has Georgia executed as many as five people in a year: in 2015 and 1987. And there is at least one other man who has exhausted his appeals and is eligible for an execution date this year.
On Tuesday, the State Board of Pardons and Paroles will hear from Lucas’ advocates who want his sentence commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Then, in the afternoon, Jones County prosecutors and investigators will tell the board why Lucas should die as scheduled on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
“You see kids getting off the school bus, but you don’t picture them going in the house and getting murdered,” said Maj. Earle Humphries of the Jones County Sheriff’s Office, who investigated the killings and heard Lucas’ confession.
In contrast to the image of a smiling and seemingly friendly Lucas in the photo on the Department of Corrections website, the then-19-year-old Lucas “was cold and … matter of fact when we interviewed him and he was confessing” to the murders, Humphries said.
But advocates for Lucas argued in a clemency petition that he should be spared because he has changed during his 18 years in prison and has helped many fellow Death Row inmates.
“Daniel committed murder,” his lawyers wrote in the clemency petition filed with the board last week. “He deserves to be punished harshly, as he has been and will continue to be. But he has also shown that he is much more than his crime. He is an example of how someone who has done something terribly wrong can repent and choose a different path. And in choosing that path, he … wants to continue giving back to the world.”
They said in the petition that Lucas now follows Buddhist teachings that focus on compassion and wisdom through daily meditation. He “wants to atone for what he did to the Moss family. … He lives his life today in a manner that gives strength and inspiration to others both inside the prison and out, and he will continue to do so if the board gives him the opportunity,” his lawyers wrote.
Lucas exhausted his appeals in October when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take his case.
Stephen Bradley, district attorney of the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit, called the crime incomprehensible. “You can’t get your head around it,” he said.
What happened 18 years ago in the house on Griswoldville Road outside the tiny Middle Georgia town of Grey was detailed in Rhode’s and Lucas’ confessions, investigators’ reports and trial testimony.
Lucas, then 19, and Rhode, 18, were inside the Moss house, looking for anything they could sell to buy drugs, when Bryan got home from school.
The boy saw the two men through the window, so he picked up a bat propped just outside the backdoor.
Lucas and Rhode, armed with .25-caliber and .357-caliber handguns, saw Bryan too. They were waiting for him when he crept into the house.
Lucas shot and wounded the boy.
When the men saw Kristin walking up the driveway, they moved Bryan to another room and shot him again, this time killing the boy.
Then they shot Kristin.
Steven Moss, a truck driver, was killed moments after he stepped through the door.
To ensure the children were dead, Lucas shot all three again and again.
Steven Moss’ wife and the children’s mother, Gerri Ann, found her family dead about an hour later.
“They could have got away (without killing anyone) but they didn’t want to leave any witnesses,” Humphries said.
But there were people who knew of Lucas’ and Rhode’s plans to go to the Moss house, and there were witnesses who saw them leaving in a red car.
Two days after the murders, Lucas and Rhode were in custody.
Rhode was executed in 2010 after a six-day delay because he tried to kill himself by slitting his own throat and wrists. That's the year, according to the clemency petition, that Lucas sank into a deep depression and began to study Buddhism.
“This is the worst of the worst sort of crime,” said prosecutor Bradley. “The impact on the community and the impact on the surviving member of the family is unspeakable. … We thought we were a sleepy little town. We didn’t have home invasions. This case made us think bad things could happen in the world.”
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