In his brief, Holland states that his attorney wrote to him shortly after the state petition was denied and told Holland (wrongly) that the time period for filing the federal petition began when the Fla. Supreme Court denied his direct appeal, and so it had already expired by the time this attorney was appointed to Holland’s case. In fact (as Holland himself pointed out) the time period began when the US Supreme Court denied review, so there had still been plenty of time left for the attorney to file the federal petition if he’d been diligent.
If I were counsel for the state, I might not have opted to pursue this timeliness argument in this case, because the facts are so bad. The attorney unquestionably erred, Holland himself was acting as a diligent and knowledgeable jailhouse lawyer, and the deadline was only missed by a relatively short amount of time. Now there’s a risk that the Court will put in place a broad rule that will allow relitigation of deadlines in many more cases.
Maybe this issue was jurisdictional; i.e., the court decided that it was not an issue that could be waived by the state even if it wanted to.
It’s possible this was a good attorney, but tremendously overworked, and the filing deadline somehow slipped through cracks and he had enough going on that he simply didn’t notice until it was too late. Or he could have a substance abuse problem, and be barely functional, something that often comes out when multiple misconduct cases begin to stack up. Or be going through a horrendous personal problem in his life, and … etc etc.
I was actually wondering if perhaps the attorney was doing it in order to give his client further basis for more appeals and more delays. If the guy was obviously guilty, and the lawyer did not think anything he did would “work” on appeal, maybe he was willing to fall on his sword. Also a Hollywood scenario, of course.
Holland’s lawyer was a fellow named Bradley Collins - it looks like that may be this guy: http://www.bradleymcollins.com . His website is terrible - looks it it was generated in haste from a template - but it does make clear that Collins claims to have experience in capital cases.
This makes me doubt that this was a good attorney who was tremendously overworked. I’ve never been involved in a capital case, but I have to assume that those would get top priority in any responsible lawyer’s office. I suppose it’s possible that Collins had so many capital cases that this one slipped through the cracks - but Florida just doesn’t use the death penalty that often. If Collins were working at the Innocence Project or was hired by the federal public defender’s office to do capital work exclusively, I could see it - but this guy seems to work a broad spectrum of cases. If he had to neglect something - and he shouldn’t have had to - this should have been the very, very last thing he’d screw up.
On the other hand - just checked something. The Florida Bar website lets you search for lawyers by name - the only Bradley Collins who comes up on the search appears to be the same fellow as the one at the website above: Lawyer Directory – The Florida Bar . He’s apparently in good standing at present (though that can’t last), with no disciplinary history over the past ten years.
(By the way - I hasten to add that all of this information is publicly available. The lawyer’s name was given in multiple court filings and news articles, and the Florida Bar website is expressly meant for use by the public.)
My answer would be to require attorneys pursuing Death Penalty cases to have additional training and vetting. In fact, I wouldn’t allow prosecutors OR defense attorneys without the requisite additional work to work on such cases. This would require substantial moral investigation and character analysis as well as considerable practical criminal trial experience.