A fed­er­al appeals court upheld the death sen­tence of Georgia inmate Robert Holsey (pic­tured), despite the fact that Holsey’s lead lawyer drank a quart of vod­ka every day dur­ing the tri­al and was about to be sued for steal­ing client funds. The attor­ney him­self tes­ti­fied that he ​“prob­a­bly shouldn’t have been allowed to rep­re­sent any­body.” The court assumed the attor­ney’s incom­pe­tence, but gave great def­er­ence to the Georgia Supreme Court’s opin­ion that his poor per­for­mance did not affect the out­come of even the sen­tenc­ing phase of the tri­al. Judge Rosemary Barkett dis­sent­ed in the 2 – 1 deci­sion, not­ing the jury nev­er heard evi­dence that Holsey was abused so bad­ly as a child that his neigh­bors referred to his home as ​“the tor­ture cham­ber.” Had the jury heard evi­dence of the ​“hor­rif­ic child abuse,” she wrote, he like­ly would not have been sen­tenced to death. Holsey’s appeals lawyer, Brian Kammer, said the jury did not hear that cru­cial evi­dence because Holsey’s lead tri­al attor­ney ​“opt­ed to anes­thetize him­self with vod­ka rather than pre­pare ade­quate­ly to defend against the death penal­ty. The 11th Circuit major­i­ty appears sim­i­lar­ly to have anes­thetized its sense of justice.”

(B. Rankin, ​“Court upholds cop killer’s death sen­tence,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 14, 2012). See Representation and Arbitrariness. Listen to DPIC’s pod­cast on Representation.

Citation Guide