Had Allen Holman been prosecuted under current laws, he likely never would have faced the death penalty. He pled guilty and expressed deep remorse for shooting his wife, Linda Holman, to death in a grocery store parking lot in Apex. Allen and Linda were both seriously mentally ill, and Allen did not plan the crime. Instead, the July 1997 killing followed an out-of-control argument. Afterward, devastated by his actions, Allen shot himself in the stomach, one of several suicide attempts both before and after the crime.
Allen’s trial attorneys say that, in a private conversation, a Wake County prosecutor said the office would offer a sentence of life without parole “in a heartbeat” if the law allowed it. However, at the time, North Carolina was the only state in the nation that forced district attorneys to seek death in every aggravated first-degree murder. In 1998, a Wake jury sent Allen to death row.
Under current law, defendants willing to take responsibility for their crimes are almost never prosecuted capitally. In Wake County today, defendants are tried for the death penalty only if they refuse to plead guilty to first-degree murder. If they agree to plead guilty, as Allen did, they receive a sentence of life without parole. Documented serious mental illness like Allen’s is another factor that, today, almost always leads a prosecutor to choose a life sentence over death.
Even in cases that go to capital trials, Wake juries have not voted for a death sentence since 2007. But, at the time of Allen’s trial, even people who pled guilty, committed unplanned crimes, or were so mentally ill that they could barely participate in their own defense ended up on death row. Allen was one of them.
Allen and Linda Holman married in 1992. Allen had a history of depression and suicide attempts. Linda had multiple personality disorder and a substance abuse problem; Allen was her fifth husband. From the beginning, the marriage was fraught with violence on both sides. Shortly before the murder, Allen injured his back, lost his job, and attempted suicide. Linda asked Allen to move out. She told friends she wanted him dead and wished his suicide attempt had been successful. She openly resumed her relationship with an ex-husband, and then taunted Allen by displaying a nude photo of her lover in the bedroom she shared with Allen.
The jury that sentenced Allen to death, however, had little of this context. Allen refused to cooperate with his attorneys to present mitigating evidence of his mental illness. His lawyers failed to present any evidence of Linda’s personality disorder either. The jury never knew that Linda had repeatedly shot at and tried to stab Allen in the past, or that she was openly committing adultery. What’s more, Allen’s lawyers didn’t allow him to testify in his own defense, and no one told the jury of his deep remorse for the crime. While none of this evidence excused the murder, it would have helped explain Allen’s actions and might have persuaded the jury to vote for a life sentence.
On death row, Allen’s remorse, depression, and mental illness have persisted. During a crucial period in his appeals process, he fired his attorneys and asked to be executed, so the courts were never able to fully review his case. Allen has since asked to resume his appeals, but he lost his chance to present key evidence to the courts.
