On December 9 2014 despite objections from anti-death penalty activists, a last minute petition to the Supreme Court, and media outcry, the state of Georgia killed Robert Wayne Holsey. Convicted in 1997 for murdering sheriff’s deputy William Robinson, Holsey’s guilt was never in question. And yet, in the weeks and days leading up to his execution, bolstered by severely negligent representation in his first trial and questions regarding his intellectual capabilities, Mr. Holsey’s case garnered significant media attention.
Writing for The Guardian, Ed Pilkington describes the unethical antics of Mr. Holsey’s first lawyer: “Every night during the trial he drank the equivalent of more than 20 shots of vodka. He was also under police investigation at the time for having stolen more than $100,000 from a client – a theft for which he was convicted soon after Holsey’s trial ended, sentenced to 10 years in prison and disbarred from practising the law.”
Perpetually inebriated, Mr. Price failed to provide the jury with any reason to spare his client the death penalty. He neglected to make a compelling case regarding Mr. Holsey’s intellectual disability, despite only having an IQ of 70. He did not share with the jury any information regarding his client’s difficult childhood.
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As a Christian, I believe all humans bear the image of God and so all lives are sacred. By adopting the death penalty, redemption and reconciliation is overlooked, and a culture of death and destruction is reinforced.
More so, I am aware of the structural racism and classism inherent in our justice system—a system that failed Mr. Holsey repeatedly. At the launch of a new initiativeaimed at mobilizing a diverse coalition to help end the death penalty, evangelical activist Jim Wallis shared, “The single most important factor to who goes on death row is race. We can’t accept that anymore. People who are intellectually disabled, indigent, are the ones on death row.”