Rhonda Cook posts, "Hearing to see if suicidal inmate is sane enough to be executed," at 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.
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.”
And:
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.
Earlier coverage of the case is here.
The 1986 Supreme Court ruling in Ford v. Wainwright established the standards for competency to be executed. Competency to be executed is also an issue in the case of Scott Panetti. StandDown's mental illness index is here.
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