Georgia executes inmate said to be mentally disabled

A Georgia death-row inmate who killed a sheriff’s deputy nearly 20 years ago was executed Tuesday despite his lawyers’ pleas for clemency on the basis that the inmate is mentally disabled and his defense attorney allegedly drank heavily at the time of the trial. 

Robert Wayne Holsey, 49, was declared dead at 10:51 p.m. Tuesday at the state prison in Jackson. He was convicted of shooting Baldwin County Sheriff’s Deputy Will Robinson in the head after the officer pulled him over after a convenience store robbery in 1995. Holsey was convicted of Robinson’s murder on Feb. 11, 1997.

The lead attorney who represented Holsey in that case, Andrew Prince, drank large quantities of alcohol each night during the trial proceedings, Holsey’s current lawyers said. Prince later lost his law license and went to prison for stealing money from clients. Before he died in 2011, Prince testified that he did not adequately represent Holsey, according to Brian Kammer, the attorney who is handling Holsey's appeals. 

“He admitted that he had no business representing anybody, certainly not in a capital case,” Kammer said.

Kammer also said Holsey is mentally disabled, but Prince had never raised that issue at trial as a possible mitigating factor that could have spared him the death penalty.

Holsey’s lawyers filed an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, The New York Times reported. The attorneys argued that the state’s criteria to establish if someone is mentally disabled conflicts with a recent Supreme Court decision.

Holsey’s lawyers argued that Georgia's law — which the Death Penalty Information Center says requires capital defendants to prove “mental retardation” beyond a reasonable doubt — violates the top court's decision. The center monitors capital punishment.

The Supreme Court banned the execution of mentally disabled people with a ruling in 2002, and ruled in May this year that a state must examine the defendant’s broader ability to function, rather than relying solely on IQ score. 

Holsey's lawyers said his IQ score has been measured around 70 — the number that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists as the starting point for the being considered intellectually disabled. His lawyers also told the Times that their client only functions at a third- or fourth-grade level and has never been able to live on his own.  However, the state of Georgia argues that because Holsey was able to drive a car and had a girlfriend, he could not be considered disabled, the Times reported.

Al Jazeera and wire services