willrobinson47.com

By Rob Peecher
Macon Telegraph Staff Writer

JACKSON – One of condemned murderer Robert Wayne Holsey’s trial lawyers testified Tuesday that her inexperience and his other attorney’s drinking made them ineffective as his defense team.

“Did Wayne deserve a better defense? Yes,” Brenda Trammell said.

“I tried to do the best that I could.” Also at Holsey’s appeal hearing, a Texas crime lab director laid out two “probable” scenarios for how Baldwin County sheriff’s deputy Will Robinson was killed in December 1995 – both of which dispute the findings of investigators who worked the murder and the jury that convicted Holsey.

During her testimony Tuesday, Trammell also said that on at least two instances she believed Andy Prince was drinking during evening recesses.

“He did not come to court and either by smell or action appear that he’d had anything to drink,” Trammell said. “I got the impression it was in the evening he was going somewhere and drinking.”

Prince, who is scheduled to testify today, claimed in an affidavit that he was drunk while the trial was in session. Prince has since been disbarred and has served time in prison for illegally removing money from clients’ escrow accounts.

But Superior Court Judge L.A. “Buster” McConnell, who was the trial judge, also testified that he did not believe Prince was drunk. McConnell testified that Prince did leave the courtroom on occasion during jury selection to smoke cigarettes “one after the other,” but only remembered him leaving the courtroom a couple of times to contact witnesses during the trial.

McConnell further testified that about a year later, when he was hearing a death penalty case where neither member of the defense team had tried a capital case before, he took it upon himself to contact Prince to assist with the defense. McConnell said he had done this because he’d been impressed with Prince’s strategy in Holsey’s death penalty case.

Holsey’s attorneys, who are with the Georgia Resource Center, are attempting to prove that Holsey is retarded and had ineffective counsel. Monday, forensic psychologists testified that Holsey is “mildly” retarded.

To prove his trial attorneys were ineffective, Holsey’s lawyers also are attempting to show weaknesses in the prosecution that were not exploited during the trial. Ronald Singer, a crime lab director from Fort Worth, Texas, and a private consultant, testified that he has reviewed investigators’ files, photographs and sketches of the crime scene. Singer said he found six “significant” weaknesses in the investigation, and further testified that the prosecution’s version at trial of the events surrounding Robinson’s death is not as likely as two scenarios he developed.

“In my opinion,” Singer testified, “it is more probable that there was more than one perpetrator.”

Singer’s theory is that Robinson, who fired nine shots before he was killed, at some point turned to shoot at an unknown person across the street. He developed his theory based on three primary factors: a bullet was found at the crime scene two weeks after Robinson’s murder that was not fired from Robinson’s weapon or the murder weapon; the fatal wound was in the back of Robinson’s head, suggesting to Singer that Robinson had turned; and the pattern of spent cartridges from Robinson’s gun.

Among the six weaknesses Singer found with the crime scene investigation was a bloody fingerprint on a plastic chair that was not analyzed to determine whose blood or fingerprint it was. Singer – who testified that he never visited the crime scene himself – saw the fingerprint in a photograph. However, according to one of the investigators who worked the crime scene, the fingerprint Singer referenced was actually paint and not blood, and that was why investigators decided not to have it analyzed.

William Walker, a civilian crime scene technician from Bedford, Texas, assisted Singer by drawing sketches of the crime scene. Tom Dunn, director of the Georgia Resource Council and one of Holsey’s attorneys, told Augusta Circuit Superior Court Judge Neal Dickert, who is presiding over the hearing, that Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills called Walker’s chief last week to complain that Walker was scheduled to testify in this hearing.

Dunn said Sills accused Walker of “going against the blue wall” and asked that Walker be investigated.

“I’m sorry, judge, that offends me,” Dunn said.

Sills, who was contacted after the hearing, confirmed he had called the police chief in Bedford after seeing Walker’s affidavit to determine his qualifications.

“He told me, and then he wanted to know why I was asking. When I told him, he said, ‘He’s doing what?’

He asked for a copy of affidavit and I sent it to him. I made no accusations about Mr. Walker at all whatsoever and did not ask for any kind of investigation,” Sills said.

Sills, who was the chief deputy in Baldwin County when Robinson was killed, also questioned Singer’s “clairvoyant supernatural abilities” to determine what happened at a crime scene he had only seen in pictures while in Texas.

Cathy Crawford, a paralegal who worked for Prince during Holsey’s trial, testified that a private investigator refused to continue doing work on the Holsey trial because Prince had stopped paying him. During a deposition for the hearing, Crawford told Mitchell Watkins, the lawyer from the Attorney General’s office handling the appeal for the state, that Prince and Trammell had not done a good job of defending Holsey.

“Brenda was too busy praying and Andy was too busy drinking to effectively represent this man,” Watkins quoted Crawford as saying.

Holsey is in what amounts to his second round of appeals since his 1996 conviction when a jury found him guilty of Robinson’s murder.

On Dec. 17, 1995, Holsey brandished a gun and demanded money from the clerk of a Jet Food Store in Milledgeville. The clerk called police and provided a description of Holsey’s vehicle. Less than four minutes later, Robinson stopped Holsey.

After calling in the license plate number, Robinson approached Holsey’s car, and Holsey shot Robinson in the head.

To contact Rob Peecher, call (706) 485 -3987 or e-mail

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