willrobinson47.com

Associated Press

ATLANTA - The Georgia Supreme Court has reinstated the death penalty against a man convicted in 1995 of murdering a Baldwin County sheriff’s deputy.

Robert Wayne Holsey, now 41, had been on death row for the 1995 killing of deputy William Robinson IV.

In May, Superior Court Judge Neal Dickert overturned the death sentence, citing ineffective defense counsel. The judge ruled that Holsey’s defense did not go far enough in detailing his troubled family background or mental health issues before the jury.

But in a unanimous decision released Monday, the state’s high court ruled that Holsey’s claims regarding ineffective counsel “must fail given the lack of resulting actual prejudice.”

In his appeal, Holsey submitted evidence about the defendant’s “limited intelligence, his troubled and abusive home life, his positive contributions at home and elsewhere, and his mother’s and sister’s mental health issues.”

Justice P. Harris Hines wrote in the decision that “introduction of Holsey’s new evidence at his trial would not have had an impact on the jury’s sentencing deliberations sufficient to help sustain a successful ineffective assistance of counsel claim regarding the sentencing phase.”

Holsey was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1997.

Robinson was killed in December 1995 while trying to arrest Holsey in connection with an armed robbery.

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