[Update 12:15 am (Sept. 27): Brandon Rhode was granted a stay of execution by the Georgia Supreme Court on Friday afternoon, a few hours before his second execution date. The stay will be in effect until Monday, Sept. 27 at 4pm. He has been scheduled again for execution for Monday, Sept. 27 at7pm. Please continue to take action!]
The state of Georgia wants to execute Brandon Rhode tonight at 7pm. Please take action – ask the Parole Board to stay the execution. Amnesty International just released a new document about the cruelty of the death penalty, highlighting this case and underlining the irony of President Obama’s speech to the United Nations promoting the need for the world to focus on the respect of human rights.
Rhode’s lawyers are scrambling to halt the execution stating that a meaningful competency review of Rhode has not been made. Almost 90 pages of documents about his hospital visit early in the week following his attempted suicide were only just today sent to his lawyers. Other documents have also been slow coming to them that are critical in mounting an intervention around his competency to face execution. It seems that Rhode’s attempt to take his only life, using a razor blade to his arms and neck, have been inconvenient to authorities who have been tasked with taking his life. Rhode is not an innocent man, but he is a human being and what we as a society do to him speaks volumes about who we are and what our values are. The state is making us all complicit in an unnecessary and outrageous act of cruelty.