Who Is Daniel Anthony Lucas? Georgia Man Convicted In 1998 Triple Killing Executed With Lethal Injection

Daniel Anthony Lucas, a man convicted in the 1998 killings of a central Georgia trucking company owner and his two children during a home burglary, was executed Wednesday by lethal injection. The execution of Lucas, 37, became the fifth in the state this year.

The Georgia Department of Corrections said that Lucas was declared dead at 9:54 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson city. Lucas was sentenced to death after he confessed to fatally shooting Bryan Moss, 11, near Macon city on April 23, 1998, after the boy arrived home from school and found Lucas and Brandon Rhode burglarizing the house. Lucas also killed the father, 37-year-old Steven Moss, and his 15-year-old daughter Kristin.

Rhode, who was also convicted for the killings, was executed in September 2010.

Earlier Wednesday, Georgia's highest court and the U.S. Supreme Court declined Lucas' request for a stay of the execution. Lucas' lawyers described him as a changed man in a petition, but prosecutors described him as a "pure damn evil," Reuters reported.

"For the past 18 years he has devoted himself to learning and self improvement," the petition reportedly said. "He has been a model inmate. He has found faith."

According to his lawyers, Lucas became a "desperate alcoholic and addict, and he committed a horrible crime," as a result of an abusive childhood, but is "not beyond redemption."