Trial Set to Begin in Fatal Carjacking
A jury has been selected in the capital murder trial of Alan Brett Holland, who is accused of fatally shooting a woman at a Ventura shopping mall last year. Opening statements are scheduled to begin Monday.
Attorneys have spent the last few weeks questioning dozens of prospective jurors for what is expected to be a short trial with potentially grave consequences.
Holland, 30, faces a possible death sentence if convicted of killing 65-year-old Mildred Wilson on July 20, 1996. The Oxnard woman was fatally shot in the parking lot of Ventura’s Poinsettia Pavilion mall during an alleged carjacking.
The Ventura County Grand Jury indicted Holland on charges of murder, robbery and carjacking in August 1996.
He was also indicted on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and the grand jury included two special circumstance allegations that the killing took place during the commission of a robbery and carjacking.
The allegations would make Holland eligible for the death penalty, which the district attorney decided to seek three months after the indictment.
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