willrobinson47.com

By Greg Bluestein

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA -
Convicted murderer Robert Wayne Holsey either has a sophisticated
vocabulary and an adequate IQ or a record of school failure and a drunk lawyer
who failed to point out his client’s deficiencies when Holsey was on trial for
his life.

Armed with school records and trial documents, Holsey’s lawyers and state
prosecutors clashed again Monday before the Georgia Supreme Court to debate
whether he deserves the death penalty for the 1995 killing of a Baldwin County
sheriff’s deputy.

Holsey was on death row for the killing of William Robinson when a judge
overturned the sentence in May, ruling that Holsey’s lawyer didn’t go far enough
in pursuing a mental retardation defense.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Susan Boleyn told the judges that Holsey’s
family never brought up mental retardation or a learning disability during the
1997 trial. She also said he had a “surprising” vocabulary and a recent IQ score
that landed him out of the range of mental retardation.

“He didn’t function in society because he was anti-social,” she said, not
because of a mental deficiency.

Holsey’s attorney, Thomas Dunn, said his client had earned lower scores on
the IQ test during earlier takes and logged an adequate score only because he
was given an abbreviated version of the test.

He also noted how Holsey’s lawyer during the murder trial, Andy Prince, later
testified that during the trial he was drinking a quart of vodka a day. “He was
an absolute train wreck,” Dunn said.

Robinson was shot to death in December 1995 after he stopped Holsey’s car,
which matched the description of a getaway vehicle in the armed robbery of a
convenience store.

Ocmulgee District Attorney Fred Bright has said if the state’s high court
doesn’t reinstate the death sentence, he will seek a retrial.

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