Georgia to carry out its 5th execution of the year this week
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Butts County Coroner van pulls into the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison, Tuesday, April 12, 2016, in Jackson, Ga., ahead of the scheduled execution of Kenneth Fults. The man convicted of killing his neighbor during a burglary in 1996 became the fourth person put to death in Georgia this year.
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia plans to carry out its fifth execution of the year on Wednesday when a man convicted in the 1998 killings of a trucking company owner and his two children is set to die.
Daniel Anthony Lucas is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the state prison in Jackson. Georgia executes inmates by injecting the barbiturate pentobarbital.
Lucas, 37, was sentenced to die in 1999 for the killings of Steven Moss, 37, his 11-year-old son Bryan and 15-year-old daughter Kristin, who interrupted a burglary at their home near Macon in central Georgia.
Here are some things to know:
THE CRIME
Lucas and another man, Brandon Rhode, were searching the Moss home for valuables in April 1998 when Bryan Moss saw them through a front window and entered through a back door armed with a baseball bat, prosecutors have said. They say the two wrestled Bryan to a chair and Lucas shot him in the shoulder. Lucas then led the boy to a bedroom and shot him multiple times, prosecutors have said.
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Rhode met Kristin as she got home from school and forced her to sit on a chair and shot her twice with a pistol, according to court records. Rhode then ambushed Steven Moss when he arrived home, shooting him four times with the same pistol. Lucas later shot the two children again to make sure they were dead, according to the records.
Moss’ wife, Gerri Ann, discovered the bodies when she returned home from work.
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CO-DEFENDANT EXECUTED
Rhode was also convicted in the killings and was put to death in September 2010. His execution was delayed by about a week after he tried to kill himself by slashing his arms and throat just hours before he was initially set to be executed.
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FAST PACE OF EXECUTIONS
If Lucas is executed Wednesday, he will be the fifth person put to death in Georgia. That will match the record — set in 1987 and tied last year — for the most executions carried out in a calendar year in the state since the death penalty was reinstated nationwide in 1976. With eight months left in the year, it seems likely the state will set a new record this year.
His execution would also mean that Georgia has executed more inmates in a 12-month period than at any other time since reinstatement of the death penalty. Georgia has executed seven people in the last 12 months, starting with Kelly Gissendaner on Sept. 30. The only other time the state executed that many people in a 12-month period was when seven inmates were put to death between October 2001 and August 2002.
Only four states have carried out executions this year for a total of 12. Aside from the four executed in Georgia so far, six inmates have been put to death in Texas and one each in Alabama and Florida.
11 responses to “Georgia to carry out its 5th execution of the year this week”
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If you allowing the death penalty then do it. Can’t understand why they keep the perps waiting. Execute on a daily basis. Save time, money and resources. Lesson the prison population as well.
So brutal with disregard to innocent lives. So many advocates to abolish the death penalty, but we need to continue this to deter this type of heinous crime.
Despite death penalty, heinous crimes will be committed. Humans are animals and no doubt there will be other murders/killings. Greed and avarice are human traits and there is a constant battle with the have and the have not.
But the person who committed the crime will never do it again. One less dangerous person on the street. Unlike Hawaii where you get 100 strikes and your still on hope probation.
Ilima45, The execution is carried out under the State of Georgia’s law. Don’t understand why the Star-advertiser has printed this story?
Served them right for committing such a heinous crime….at least they won’t be preying on the rest of society……..
I have absolutely no sympathy for the two people convicted of this crime but the timing of the execution forces me to make note that Georgia’s increasing number of executions certainly didn’t deter the murders of five people yesterday in the state. A society needs to be honest about its motives. If capital punishment is about retribution, ok but don’t try to justify it with the idea that it somehow prevents similar crimes from happening. The research on the deterrent effect is hopelessly ambiguous.
There are very good reasons why the death penalty as practiced in America remains largely ineffective as a deterrent, the main one being the often decades-long delay between the imposition of the sentence and its actual execution (no pun intended), and the other being the extremely confidential way the sentence is carried out in its modern form.
Do I want to see the process expedited from years to a matter of months or even weeks? No. The finality of the death sentence argues that every possible form of appeal be allowed to run its course, especially in convictions that rely heavily, if not entirely, on circumstantial evidence.
Should we make actual executions more public, maybe even to the point of making them pay-per-view events? Again no. While I’m almost certain such a scheme would raise lots of money and could fund worthy causes such as more and better air conditioning for schools, I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable living in a society where gratification of the public’s bloodlust was deemed necessary or even desirable.
So I don’t approve of the death penalty on principle. It does bother me though, that my highfalutin stance could well change if a loved one of mine were to fall victim to a serial rapist or a Leopold and Loeb kind of “just for the hell of it” murderer.
I think a lot of people feel ambivalent about the death penalty. It’s one of those complicated questions that just doesn’t have a simple answer in America.
I find this application of the death penalty highly immoral— in that phenobarbital was used instead of boiling oil.
Sayonara Daniel Anthony Lucas !!!!