Robert Holsey Case Roundup: ThinkProgress, Associated Press, Georgia Public Broadcasting
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Stefanie Faucher
Dec 8, 2014, 11:56:17 AM12/8/14
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This email contains news coverage from:
- ThinkProgress - Georgia Is About To Execute An Intellectually Disabled Man Whose Lawyer Was A Drunk Felon
- Associated Press - Clemency hearing to be held for death row inmate
- Georgia Public Broadcasting - Should Georgia's Next Execution Be Stopped?
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Georgia Is About To Execute An Intellectually Disabled Man Whose Lawyer Was A Drunk Felon
By Ian Millhiser, December 8, 2014
Robert Wayne Holsey’s attorney during his capital trial was an alcoholic who admitted to drinking up to a quart of vodka every night while he was representing Holsey at trial. While the trial was going on, the lawyer was also facing a lawsuit from a client he had taken over $116,000 from. Eventually, the attorney lost his law license and was sentenced to three years in prison over the dispute with this client. During the period when he was preparing for Holsey’s trial, the attorney got into an argument with his neighbors that culminated in him threatening them with a gun while screaming “N*gger, get the fuck out of my yard or I’ll shoot your black ass.” Holsey is African American.
In 2006, perhaps due to the shambles the lawyer’s life was rapidly descending into, a Georgia state judge determined that Holsey’s attorney “failed to prepare and present any meaningful mitigation evidence as a defense to the death penalty” during the phase of Holsey’s trial that determined that he would be sentenced to die. Perhaps most damningly of all, the attorney “advised the trial judge at a pre-trial hearing that I.Q. and mental retardation were not going to be issues at trial.” A Georgia law provides that a defendant may be found “guilty but mentally retarded,” and that capital defendants who receive this verdict cannot be executed. Several years after Holsey’s conviction, the Supreme Court held that “death is not a suitable punishment for a mentally retarded criminal.” (The term “mentally retarded,” though widely viewed as offensive today, used to be the clinical term for the disability now known as “intellectually disability.”)
The attorney’s failure to introduce evidence that could have spared Holsey from a death sentence is expected to be addressed at a last-minute clemency hearing that takes place on Monday. Holsey’s best path to escape execution, however, most likely stems from the fact that, as someone who is probably intellectually disabled, he should be ineligible for the death penalty.
There is significant evidence showing that Holsey is intellectually disabled. Several experts testified in subsequent proceedings, where Holsey was represented by different counsel, that Holsey has “significantly subaverage intellectual functioning with an IQ of approximately 70,” according to Holsey’s current attorneys. An IQ of 70 or less is one of the standards clinical psychologists use to measure intellectual disability. Yet Holsey is scheduled for execution on Tuesday and, unless a court or a clemency board rethinks a state law that hobbles the constitutional ban on executing the intellectually disabled in Georgia, Holsey’s execution is likely to proceed.
Although Georgia law does permit intellectually disabled inmates to argue that they are ineligible for execution, the state supreme court reads the state’s law to only permit such inmates to win this argument if they are “found beyond a reasonable doubt to be retarded.” The “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard is an extraordinarily high evidentiary burden — it is the standard prosecutors must overcome in order to obtain convictions because our Constitution requires the state to overcome a high burden before denying anyone of life or liberty — and it is not typically imposed on people who have themselves been accused of a crime. Indeed, Holsey’s lawyers argue that Georgia’s decision to impose this burden on intellectually disabled inmates is “unique” among the states.
Applying this rigid standard, the state judiciary has thus far refused to grant Holsey relief from his death sentence. Until recently, moreover, it appeared that they were free to do so. Although the Supreme Court ostensibly forbade executions of the intellectually disabled in its 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia, that opinion contained a significant loophole. Atkins, left “to the State[s] the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction upon [their] execution of sentences.” As a result, it appeared that Georgia might have the authority to place a burden on intellectually disabled inmates that many of them would not be able to overcome.
Earlier this year, however, in a case called Hall v. Florida, the Court began to close this loophole. Hall recognized that “[i]f the States were to have complete autonomy to define intellectual disability as they wished, the Court’s decision in Atkins could become a nullity.” Though “the States play a critical role in advancing protections and providing the Court with information that contributes to an understanding of how intellectual disability should be measured and assessed,” they do not have “unfettered discretion to define the full scope of the constitutional protection.”
This language in Hall suggests that the Supreme Court has grown frustrated with state laws that create too many barriers between intellectually disabled inmates and their constitutional rights. The most important question in Holsey’s case, however, is likely to be whether the justices’ frustration extends to Georgia — or, alternatively, whether the Georgia courts are willing to preempt this question by eliminating the requirement that Holsey prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt.
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Clemency hearing to be held for death row inmate
By The Associated Press, December 8, 2014
ATLANTA (AP) The State Board of Pardons and Paroles plans to hold a clemency hearing for a Georgia death row inmate convicted of killing a sheriff's deputy.
The clemency hearing for Robert Wayne Holsey is set for Monday. Holsey is to be executed Tuesday. A jury in February 1997 convicted Holsey of killing Baldwin County sheriff's deputy Will Robinson.
Holsey robbed a Milledgeville convenience store in December 1995. The clerk called police immediately afterward and described the robber and his car.
Robinson pulled Holsey over minutes later. Authorities say Holsey fired at Robinson as the deputy approached the vehicle.
Holsey's lawyers say he shouldn't be executed because his trial lawyer failed to present evidence that could have spared him the death penalty.
Clemency hearings are closed to the public and media.
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Should Georgia's Next Execution Be Stopped?
By Grant Blankenship, December 5, 2014
Macon, Ga. — The State of Georgia is set to execute a man on December 9, but before that can happen, nagging issues of whether or not he received adequate council have to be put to bed.
Robert Wayne Holsey was convicted of killing Baldwin County Sheriff’s Deputy Will Robinson after Robinson pulled Holsey over on the road while responding to an armed robbery call. His conviction was far from open and shut, but in the year’s since no one has asserted his innocence.
That includes Brian Kammer, executive director of the Georgia Resource Center, a non-profit that represents those on death row. Kammer has argued for clemency a number of times, including the high-profile case of Troy Davis, whose execution drew international attention. He’s representing Holsey in his clemency hearing. He said even given Holsey’s apparent guilt, he might not have gotten a fair shake at a life sentence.
“What we claimed in his case, in Mr. Holsey’s case, was that his attorney Andy Prince had rendered ineffective assistance and violated Mr.Holsey’s 6th amendment right to competent council,” Kammer said.
Andy Prince represented Holsey at trial and sentencing. The problems with his representation are well documented.
“Mr. Prince was an active alcoholic at the time of his representation of Mr. Holsey. He was consuming approximately a quart of vodka a night during the trial,” Kammer said.
Not long after Holsey’s conviction, Prince was convicted of stealing funds from another client, sentenced to his own prison stint and disbarred.
“He was a complete mess. And he was far, far from being able to provide a minimum of competent assistance,” Kammer said.
According to Kammer, Prince’s inadequacy was nowhere more important than in the post conviction, sentencing phase of Holsey’s trial. It was there that Prince elected not to present to jurors evidence of terrific childhood abuse suffered by Holsey and his siblings. Neighbors referred to the home as the torture chamber.
Prince also never told jurors how Holsey’s IQ was tested at 70 as early as age 15. That’s widely considered the limit for mental competency for execution across the country.
A later judge did hear all of that evidence as well as details of Andy Prince’s alcoholism and disbarment. That judge reduced Holsey’s sentence. But the Georgia Supreme Court later overturned that ruling.
Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Fred Bright convicted Wayne Holsey and will argue against clemency for him. His recollection of Prince’s defense is far different.
“He was the go to guy for the death penalty defense lawyer at the time,” Bright said.
Bright said from his side of the table, Prince was a tough opponent regardless of whether or not he was an alcoholic at the time.
“It wouldn’t shock me that he drank at night. I’m not there so I wouldn’t know, but that wouldn’t shock me,” Bright said.
But Bright says what Prince did at night doesn’t matter. He says in court, Prince was formidable.
“During the day when he was in court he was sober, he was lucid, he was a fighter, he worked his tail off,” Bright said.
Bright said Prince defended Holsey against a raft of compelling physical evidence that put the gun that killed Deputy Will Robinson in his hand despite the lack of eyewitness testimony. His defense kept one juror indecisive for seven hours of deliberation.
As for Holsey’s childhood, Bright will admit it wasn’t great, but it was rough for his sister Regina, too.
“She chose to serve her country in Desert Storm. He chose to rob a convenience store,” Bright said, “I told the jury, ‘Same Mother.’”
Holsey’s sister went on to be a Baldwin County Deputy and later a Deputy U.S. Marshall.
As for issues of Holsey’s intelligence, Bright said Prince left that out of court because even his experts could only give him a lukewarm maybe as to whether Holsey was, in the legal terminology of the day, mentally retarded.
Bright defends the legal arguments made on both sides of Holsey’s case and said that despite his zeal for justice, the last thing he wants is to kill an innocent man.
“We don’t take this lightly. It’s not a notch on my belt or anything,” he said.
No one is arguing Wayne Holsey’s innocence.
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