Holsey v. Warden, Ga. Diagnostic Prison, 09-14257
Decision Date | 13 September 2012 |
Docket Number | No. 09-14257,D.C. Docket No. 07-00129-CV-CDL,09-14257 |
Parties | ROBERT WAYNE HOLSEY, Petitioner - Appellant, v. WARDEN, Georgia Diagnostic Prison, Respondent - Appellee. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
[PUBLISH]
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Georgia
Before CARNES, BARKETT, and EDMONDSON, Circuit Judges.
In the early morning hours of December 17, 1995, Robert Wayne Holseyrobbed a convenience store in Milledgeville, Georgia, and fled. Minutes later his car was stopped by Baldwin County Deputy Sheriff Will Robinson. The deputy, who was twenty-six years old, approached the vehicle. Holsey shot him dead. Fourteen months later, in February of 1997, a jury convicted Holsey of malice murder and armed robbery. The jury fixed his sentence at death on the malice murder conviction, and the court imposed that sentence. He has been on Georgia's death row for the past fifteen years.
During those fifteen years, Holsey has exhausted his state court direct appeal and state postconviction challenges. See Holsey v. State, 524 S.E.2d 473 (Ga. 1999) (direct appeal) [Holsey I]; Holsey v. Schofield, No. 2000-V-604, Sup. Ct. of Butts Cnty. (May 9, 2006) (Final Order on Amended Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus) [Holsey II]; Schofield v. Holsey, 642 S.E.2d 56 (Ga. 2007) (collateral appeal) [Holsey III]. Holsey's convictions and death sentence were affirmed on direct appeal. Holsey I, 524 S.E.2d at 480. In the state postconviction proceedings, the trial court vacated Holsey's death sentence, concluding that his trial lawyers had rendered ineffective assistance at the sentencing phase of Holsey's trial in regard to presentation of mitigating circumstances evidence about his limited intelligence and his troubled, abusive childhood. Holsey II, No. 2000-V-604, at 82-84. The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed, however, holding thatHolsey had not shown that he was prejudiced by his trial lawyers' alleged failures. Holsey III, 642 S.E.2d at 60-62.
In November 2007, Holsey filed a 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The district court denied that petition on July 2, 2009. Holsey v. Hall, No. 3:07-cv-129(CDL) (M.D. Ga. July 2, 2009) [hereinafter Holsey IV]. Holsey moved for a certificate of appealability, which the district court granted on two issues:
After the district court granted the COA on those issues, we resolved the second issue in another case. In Hill v. Humphrey, 662 F.3d 1335, 1360-61 (11th Cir. 2011) (en banc), we held that the Georgia Supreme Court's decision affirmingthe state's reasonable doubt standard for mental retardation claims did not contravene clearly established Supreme Court precedent. Our Hill decision disposes of the second COA question. This opinion addresses the first one.
On January 8, 1996, a Georgia grand jury indicted Holsey for malice murder, felony murder, and armed robbery. Four days later the State filed a notice of its intent to seek the death penalty. The trial court appointed Andrew Prince as lead counsel to represent Holsey at trial, and Brenda Trammel served as Prince's co-counsel.
The guilt phase of Holsey's trial began on February 1, 1997. As the Supreme Court of Georgia has recounted, the State at the guilt phase proved the following:
On February 11, 1997, the jury returned a verdict finding Holsey guilty of malice murder, felony murder, and armed robbery, although "[t]he felony murder conviction was vacated by operation of law." Id. at 475 n.1. The sentencing phase of Holsey's trial began the next day.
At the start of the sentencing phase, the jury learned about Holsey's criminal record for the first time. The State introduced his 1983 guilty plea conviction for armed robbery with serious bodily injury. For that crime, the state trial court had sentenced Holsey to be "confined at labor for twenty years," with fifteen years to be served in prison. The State called Scott Maher to testify about facts underlying the conviction. Maher testified that he was working as a night clerk at a Milledgeville convenience store on July 8, 1983. Holsey, who was eighteen years old at the time, entered the store, hit Maher in the face with a brick,and emptied the store's cash register.1 After Maher's testimony, the State introduced evidence that Holsey was paroled in July 1990 after serving seven years of that sentence and placed on probation for the remainder of his sentence.
The State next introduced Holsey's 1992 guilty plea convictions for two counts of aggravated assault and one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Based on those convictions, the state trial court had revoked his probation for the 1983 armed robbery conviction and ordered him to serve the remaining term of that sentence in prison. The court had also sentenced Holsey to five years probation for the three 1992 convictions, to run consecutively with the remainder of the sentence for the 1983 conviction. The jury heard all about that at the sentencing phase of Holsey's capital murder trial.
The jury also heard more details concerning the crime leading to Holsey's three convictions in 1992 for aggravated assault and felon in possession. Kenneth Simmons testified that, while he was at the Soul Master's Lounge in Milledgeville on February 22, 1992, Holsey attacked him from behind and stabbed him four times with a knife. As a result of Holsey's attack, Simmons was knocked out and suffered a punctured lung. Scotty...
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