State executes inmate who claimed mental disability

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September 10, 2010

Associated Press Fri Sep 10, 2010, 08:38 AM CDT

— ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — Alabama has executed 50-year-old Holly Wood, accused of shooting his former girlfriend to death as she slept in 1993.

Prison officials say Wood died by lethal injection at 6:21 p.m. Wood had no last words, though two of his sisters witnessing the execution screamed, cried and prayed loudly as he was executed.

Wood did not respond.

Wood was accused of breaking into the home in Troy of his former girlfriend, 34-year-old Ruby Gosha, and shooting her in the head with a shotgun while she was sleeping.

His attorneys claimed he had an IQ of 70 or less and that his trial lawyers wrongly failed to tell the jury about his mental limitations. Prosecutors said he was not as mentally disabled as claimed, and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal.

He was the fourth inmate executed in Alabama this year.

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