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Inmate is executed after SCOTUS denies stay; lawyers cited mental disability, alcoholic trial lawyer

A Georgia death-row inmate was executed Tuesday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court refused a stay to consider arguments related to intellectual disability.

Robert Wayne Holsey, 49, was executed for killing a deputy sheriff after robbing a convenience store, report the Associated Press, the New York Times and USA Today.

Two justices—Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor–would have granted a stay, according to the Supreme Court order (PDF) denying the stay and writ of certiorari. Holsey’s lawyers had claimed that Georgia’s requirement for proof of mental disability—beyond a reasonable doubt—was too tough. It is the strictest standard among all the states.

“By making it virtually impossible to prove intellectual disability, the Georgia standard reduces the Eighth Amendment’s ban on executing people with intellectual disabilities to a nullity,” Holsey’s lawyer, Brian Kammer, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Kammer had also sought clemency before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, arguing that Holsey’s alcoholic trial lawyer did not present mitigating evidence and did not conduct a proper investigation.

The New York Times noted the issues in an editorial chiding the Supreme Court for refusing to stay the execution. During the trial, the Times says, Holsey’s lawyer, Andy Prince, “was drinking a quart of vodka a day. He was also facing his own criminal investigation for stealing more than $100,000 in client funds. Before the trial was over, he was arrested and charged with brandishing a gun, threatening to shoot his black neighbors and yelling racial slurs at them. (Mr. Prince is white, and Mr. Holsey is black.)”

Prince was later disbarred and sentenced to prison for theft of the client funds. He died in 2011.

Holsey addressed the victim’s father before he was put to death, saying he was sorry for taking his son’s life, according to the AP story. “He didn’t deserve to die like that,” Holsey said. “I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me and my family.”