Georgia Supreme Court issues stay of execution for Brandon Rhode effective until 4pm on Monday

The Georgia Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for Brandon Rhode effective until 4pm on Monday.

Amnesty International Statement:

"Executing Rhode on the heels of his attempted suicide is especially cruel and inhuman," said Laura Moye, director of AIUSA's Death Penalty Abolition Campaign. "To strap Rhode’s stitched up body to a gurney, fresh with razor cuts to his wrists and neck, is particularly grizzly. He may not be innocent, but he is a human being and what is done to him speaks volumes about our society's values. Georgia officials may find it inconvenient that Rhode tried to kill himself before they could, but questions about his current competency to face the ultimate punishment must be properly addressed. We hope that the courts or State Board of Pardons and Paroles will recognize the unusual and disturbing nature of this case and stay the execution."

To say that the circumstances surrounding the past few days have been outrageous is an understatement and highlights the inhumanity and barbarity of the death penalty in Georgia.

Source: Amnesty International, September 24, 2010

Brandon Rhode's execution stayed until Monday

The Georgia Supreme Court temporarily stopped for the 2nd time the execution of Brandon Rhode.

The triple murderer was to have been executed at 7 p.m. But a little more than 2 hours before that the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay, setting the lethal injection back to Monday at 4 p.m.

His lawyers have argued that Rhode's recent suicide attempt is evidence he is not competent to be executed. They also say his constitutional protection from cruel punishment has been violated by his treatment since he slashed his neck and both arms just hours before he was to have died on Tuesday.

The order granting the temporary stay offered no reason for the 6-1 decision; Justice P.J. Carley dissented.

In a court document filed Thursday, Rhode's lawyer said the 31-year-old man was brought from "the brink of death" when he was treated for his suicide attempt only so the state could execute him a few days later.

His 1st execution date was to have been at 7 p.m. Tuesday but the Georgia Supreme Court stopped it because of the suicide attempt. It was then rescheduled for 9 a.m. Friday but the Department of Corrections moved it to 7 p.m. on the same day to allow more time for the courts to look at what attorney Brian Kammer described as "ironic circumstances" around the days leading up to Rhode’s execution for a 1998 triple murder in Jones County.

Brandon Rhode's self-inflicted neck wound

Rhode tried to kill himself by slitting the side of his neck and both arms. By the time he was discovered, Rhode was unconscious and had lost half the blood in his body; he was revived at the hospital in nearby Griffin.

His self-inflicted wounds were sutured and he was returned to death row at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, where he has been kept restrained since the suicide attempt.

His lawyer says the suicide attempt is evidence Rhode is not competent to be executed. The courts have said an execution cannot be carried out if the condemned does not understand the punishment and the reason for it.

Rhode and a co-defendant were sentenced to die a decade ago for killing 37-year-old Steven Moss, and his 11-year-old son, Bryan, and 15-year-old daughter, Kristin. Rhode and Daniel Lucas, also on death row, were ransacking the Moss home when Bryan came home and confronted the 2 men armed with a baseball bat.

They shot the boy. They killed his sister when she came home moments later. Steven Moss was their 3rd victim.

In various filings, attorneys said Rhode's should not be executed because he suffered fetal alcohol syndrome and had poor impulse control, that he is not competent because of the suicide attempt or that the execution should be delayed until prison officials address concerns that staff are not following rules that protect condemned inmates.

Late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Bill Duffey rejected Rhode's request for a stay, but he ordered the Department of Corrections to make sure Rhode is no longer a danger to himself. The DOC's existing protections did not prevent him from seriously injuring himself, the judge noted. Rhode's lawyers say a guard gave him a razor and that is what he used to cut himself.

Rhode had concealed the razor blade he used to cut his neck and arms while lying under a blanket, said Joe Drolet, a lawyer for the state attorney general's office. He was being observed by guards, but they could not see what was happening under the blanket and took action when they saw blood.

"There's not a pattern of recklessly handing out razors to suicidal death row inmates," he said.

A competency hearing that lasted almost 11 hours over 2 days ended Thursday night in a courtroom at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison.

Before the hearing resumed Thursday afternoon at the prison near Jackson, 50 miles south of Atlanta, Rhode's lawyer filed papers in court contending that Rhode has been subjected to inhumane treatment since his suicide attempt. Kammer wrote Rhode was given no medication for his physical pain or "mental anguish."

He also wrote that once Rhode was returned to prison, he was “dressed in a filthy, old, frayed jumpsuit with blood stains on it” and strapped into a "torture chair."

"The stress and barbarity of his present situation, coupled with his longstanding depression and mental illness, has resulted in Brandon Rhode now experiencing dissociative episodes as his mind tries unsuccessfully to cope with his current physical condition."

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 24, 2010