Robert Wayne Holsey was executed in Georgia last night for killing a sheriff’s deputy moments after robbing a convenience store, the Associated Press reports. Holsey, 49, was sentenced to die for the Dec. 17, 1995, killing of Baldwin County sheriff’s deputy Will Robinson. Moments before he was put to death, Holsey told the victim’s father, “Mr. Robinson, I’m sorry for taking your son’s life that night. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”
Holsey’s attorneys argued in a clemency petition that their client should be spared lethal injection because his 1997 trial was mishandled by an alcoholic lawyer who was distracted by his own problems. The trial lawyer died in 2011. He told the court that intellectual disability would not be a factor in the case, despite records showing Holsey was intellectually disabled. The jury also didn’t hear details about Holsey’s childhood, which was characterized by horrifying abuse at the hands of his mother.