[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----GEORGIA, MISSOURI

[Rick Halperin]

Dec. 8



GEORGIA----impending execution//clemency denied

Ga. panel denies clemency for death row inmate


The State Board of Pardons and Paroles has denied clemency for a Georgia death 
row inmate who killed a sheriff's deputy.

The board made its decision Monday following a clemency hearing for Robert 
Wayne Holsey, who 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 argued he shouldn't be executed because his trial lawyer 
failed to present evidence that could have spared him the death penalty.

The board did not give a reason for denying clemency.

(source: Associated Press)

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Robert Wayne Holsey denied clemency, scheduled to die Tuesday


The State Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency for Robert Wayne Holsey 
on Monday.

According to a news release, the Board thoroughly reviewed the case with 
Holsey's representatives. The Board voted to deny clemency.

Holsey is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the 
Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.

Holsey was sentenced to death for the December 1995 murder of Baldwin County 
Deputy Sheriff Will Robinson. Holsey committed an armed robbery at a 
convenience store in Milledgeville. Deputy Robinson stopped Holsey's car a few 
minutes later and was killed.

(source: NBC news)


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Robert Wayne Holsey Faces Lethal Injection in Georgia


A parole panel in Georgia refused on Monday to grant clemency to a man who is 
scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday evening, apparently unpersuaded 
by evidence that he was ineptly represented at trial by a drunken lawyer, had 
an exceptionally harsh childhood and has a severe intellectual deficit.

But in what could be a legal decision with wider effects, lawyers for the man, 
Robert Wayne Holsey, were still waiting for the Georgia Supreme Court to 
respond to a last-minute appeal. They argued that the state's standard for 
determining intellectual disability in capital cases -- the country's most 
stringent -- runs afoul of a recent decision by the United States Supreme 
Court.

Mr. Holsey was convicted of armed robbery and murder in 1997 and sentenced to 
death. He had robbed a convenience store and shot and killed a pursuing 
officer.

His trial lawyer later admitted that at the time he was drinking up to a quart 
of vodka daily and facing theft charges that would land him in prison. He said 
he should not have been representing a client.

On appeal, a Superior Court judge ruled that during the penalty phase of Mr. 
Holsey's trial, his lawyer had failed to effectively present evidence that 
might have forestalled a death penalty, including facts about Mr. Holsey's 
history and his intellectual deficit. That judge called for a new sentencing 
trial.

But the Georgia Supreme Court reversed the decision, ruling that the jury had 
heard enough evidence about mitigating factors during the initial trial.

At Monday's hearing before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole, Mr. 
Holsey's sister described the severe beatings he received as a child. Also 
testifying on his behalf were a prison pastor and a former prison guard who 
said Mr. Holsey was a reliable inmate who kept things calm, according to one of 
his lawyers, Brian Kammer of the Georgia Resource Center, a nonprofit legal 
defense group.

That Mr. Holsey had received ineffective counsel seemed clear, said John H. 
Blume, a professor and director of the death penalty project at the Cornell Law 
School.

"But the quality of representation in capital cases is often so low," he said, 
"that it's difficult to shock the courts."

He and other legal experts said a more promising tack -- if not for Mr. Holsey, 
then for defendants in the future -- is the challenge to Georgia's standard of 
proof for intellectual disability.

The state requires defendants to prove that they are intellectually disabled 
"beyond a reasonable doubt."

For those near the borderline, often described as an I.Q. around 70, that 
standard is nearly impossible to meet. Many legal experts think it violates a 
Supreme Court ruling last May that said states cannot create "an unacceptable 
risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed."

In other states, either a "preponderance of evidence" or "clear and convincing 
evidence" is necessary to establish disability, said Eric M. Freedman, a death 
penalty expert at Hofstra University. Both are less stringent standards than 
the one used in Georgia.

In a landmark decision in 2002, the United States Supreme Court barred the 
execution of mentally disabled people, but largely left it to the states to set 
the criteria.

In its decision in May, the court added new conditions, ruling in Hall v. 
Florida that the state could not rely on a simple I.Q. cutoff but rather must 
take a broad look at a person's ability to function.

Mr. Holsey's I.Q. has been measured at around 70, said Mr. Kammer, the lawyer. 
The state, he said, had argued that because he could drive a car and had a 
girlfriend, Mr. Holsey could not be disabled.

But Mr. Holsey functions at a third- or fourth-grade level and has never been 
able to live on his own or master many basic skills, Mr. Kammer said.

Another challenge to the state's standard for intellectual deficiency is 
pending before the Georgia Supreme Court, in a case involving Warren Lee Hill, 
a man convicted of murder.

Constitutional scholars say it is most likely that at some point either the 
Georgia Supreme Court or the federal Supreme Court will strike down the 
standard as an unreasonable outlier.

"You've got a national constitutional rule that people with intellectual 
disability shouldn't be executed, but it's being applied differently in 
different states," Mr. Blume of Cornell said.

(source: New York Times)





MISSOURI----impending execution

Gov. Jay Nixon should call off Missouri execution


Is Paul Goodwin mentally retarded or of borderline intelligence?

The question is of utmost importance as the clock ticks toward Goodwin’s 
scheduled execution on Wednesday. He was sentenced to death in 1999 for the 
sexual assault and murder of his neighbor, 63-year-old Joan Crotts, in north 
St. Louis County.

Two years later, then-Gov. Bob Holden signed legislation prohibiting the 
execution of inmates who are diagnosed as mentally retarded, or intellectually 
disabled, to use the preferred term. The U.S. Supreme Court declared the 
practice unconstitutional a year later when deciding the Atkins v. Virginia 
case.

Denis Keyes, an expert in intellectual disabilities whose work was cited in the 
Atkins decision, evaluated Goodwin in 2001 and again last month. “The one 
absolute certainty ... over the 12 years I have been involved with this case is 
that Paul Terrence Goodwin is now, and probably always has been, mentally 
retarded,” he wrote in a report for Goodwin’s clemency lawyers.

Goodwin spent much of his schooling in special education classes. As an adult, 
he was unable to handle his finances, work out transportation arrangements or 
take care of personal hygiene.

But the Missouri Supreme Court in 2006 sided with other experts who had 
testified that Goodwin was of borderline intelligence but not mentally 
retarded.

There is a fine line between those diagnoses and a wide margin for error. The 
risk of being wrong is one more reason for states to get out of the business of 
executing prisoners.

The nation has reached a consensus that executing people with intellectual 
disabilities is unconstitutional and inhumane. Gov. Jay Nixon should not take 
the chance of doing so. He should exercise his power to call off Goodwin’s 
execution.

(source: Editorial, Kansas City Star)