Mental health and state law

A Mr. Holly Wood was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend in Alabama back in 1994. He admitted to a cousin that he committed the crime, and when the cousin testified to that effect in court, there was little doubt that Wood was going to be convicted. The only question that remained was whether or not he would receive the death penalty.

The court-appointed attorney who took the lead in the effort to convince the jury to spare Wood’s life, Kenneth B. Trotter, had just passed the bar at the time. He had been a practicing lawyer for less than a year when he prepared and presented the case for leniency in the Wood matter. His efforts came up just short. Holly Wood was sentenced to death by the jury, who voted 10 to 2 in favor of the execution. This was the slimmest of margins, because in the state of Alabama it takes a minimum of ten “yes” votes to sentence a convict to death.

Wood has an IQ of 64. Alabama law states that an IQ under 70 results in “significantly sub-average intellectual functioning.” His lawyer, Mr. Trotter, was in possession of a competency report that contained this information. He could have presented it to the jury and contended that Wood was for all intents and purposes mentally retarded and ask that they take that into consideration while considering the death penalty.

Wood’s case was first presented to United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, and he lost the appeal in a split decision among the three judges on the panel. The dissenting jurist, Judge Rosemary Barkett, was blunt in her assessment:

“An inexperienced and overwhelmed attorney realized too late what any reasonably prepared attorney would have known: that evidence of Wood’s mental impairments could have served as mitigating evidence and deserved investigation so that it could properly be presented before sentencing.”

The contention in some quarters is that this case will bring to light some systemic problems with the Alabama capital justice system. Alabama doesn’t have a state public defenders office and funding is sparse for indigent defense. Wood’s attorneys were given a spending limit of just $1,000 maximum to prepare their case against the death penalty.

Alabama may not be in a position to allocate unlimited funds for indigent defense, but one thing is certain, and that is the fact that Holly Wood has somehow been afforded his right to appeal after appeal, and his case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where the original decision was affirmed. His lawyers have filed a petition for a rehearing.