BOSTON — It was a horrific murder: a Massachusetts man shot his estranged wife seven times, and then bludgeoned her with the butt of a rifle. The couple’s 8-year-old son found his mother’s beaten, bloodied body the next day.
The boy later won a groundbreaking legal battle to “divorce” his father.
Now, nearly two decades after the murder, the case is headed to the state’s top court. Daniel Holland is appealing a judge’s refusal to grant him a new trial, arguing that his lawyers failed to present evidence of his mental health issues. The state Supreme Judicial Court is scheduled to hear arguments Thursday.
On Oct. 14, 1998, 8-year-old Patrick Holland walked into his mother’s bedroom in their house in Quincy and found her body. He ran outside in his underwear and told a neighbor that someone had shot his mom.
“Who is going to take care of me now?” he asked.
Inside the house, police found pieces of a shattered .22-caliber rifle on Elizabeth Holland’s body.
The cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to her chest and abdomen, with blunt head trauma as a contributing factor. Holland was convicted of first-degree murder and armed home invasion in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison.
But Holland’s new lawyer, Kevin Nixon, argues that his previous lawyers should have presented evidence to the jury about Holland’s mental illness.
Prosecutors, however, say Holland’s trial lawyers made a strategic decision to focus their defense on impairment caused by Holland’s chronic abuse of drugs and alcohol because there was “scant” evidence he was mentally ill.
During his trial, Holland testified that on the day of his wife’s killing, he drank heavily and smoked marijuana and crack cocaine. He said he had no memory of being at her house that day.