The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles will soon con­sid­er the clemen­cy peti­tion of Robert Holsey describ­ing a near com­plete fail­ure in the judi­cial process that sent him to death row in 1997. As Marc Bookman described in the lat­est edi­tion of Mother Jones, Holsey was assigned a lawyer, Andy Prince, who con­sumed a quart of vod­ka every night of the tri­al. While prepar­ing Holsey’s case, he was arrest­ed in an inci­dent after point­ing a gun at a black neigh­bor and using a racial slur. Despite charges of assault, dis­or­der­ly con­duct, and pub­lic drunk­en­ness stem­ming from the racial­ly-charged crime, he was allowed to stay on as defense attor­ney for a black defen­dant fac­ing charges of mur­der­ing a white police offi­cer. Prince failed to com­mu­ni­cate with his co-coun­sel, Brenda Trammell, who had nev­er tried a cap­i­tal case, leav­ing her to per­form a com­plex cross-exam­i­na­tion with lit­tle time to pre­pare. She also gave the case’s clos­ing argu­ment after almost no notice. Prince failed to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence regard­ing Holsey’s intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties and the severe abuse he suf­fered as a child. A juror from Holsey’s tri­al lat­er said in an affi­davit that he would have spared Holsey’s life had he heard such evi­dence. However, state and fed­er­al appeals courts have held that, even with­out the fail­ings of the defense team, the out­come would prob­a­bly have been the same.

Holsey has had an exem­plary prison record of obe­di­ence, ser­vice to oth­ers, and com­pli­ance dur­ing his many years on death row.

(M. Bookman, ​“This Man is About to Die Because an Alcoholic Lawyer Botched His Case,” Mother Jones, April 22, 2014). See Representation and Intellectual Disability.

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