Jurors Begin Deliberating Whether Holland Should Get Life or Death

A jury began deliberating Wednesday on whether Brett Alan Holland will spend the rest of his life in prison or be executed for killing a 65-year-old widow at a Ventura shopping mall.

Before receiving the case about noon, the jury heard final comments from defense attorney Willard Wiksell, who pleaded for mercy for his 31-year-old client.

“We’re talking about killing him,” Wiksell told jurors. “Just to say that is an enormous thing.”

Holland is the first person in Ventura County to be prosecuted under a new law that makes a killing during a carjacking punishable by death.

Wiksell tried to show that years of drug use, a troubled childhood and brain damage sustained at age 11 left Holland with no control over his impulses.

Wiksell again told jurors that Holland suffered brain damage when he gave his dog a powerful flea bath at age 11 and that the youth began getting into trouble soon after.

Ultimately, Wiksell said, the “damaged, pathetic boy” quit school and ran away from his Florida home, supporting himself on the streets of California by prostitution.

On July 20, 1996, Wiksell told the jury, Holland made another irrational decision, this time to shoot Mildred Wilson after a five-day methamphetamine binge because the woman berated him for panhandling at the Poinsettia Plaza shopping center.

Holland made off with Wilson’s car and purse, then showed further lack of judgment by using Wilson’s credit cards to buy auto parts at a Ventura Avenue store just two hours after the shooting, Wiksell said. The defendant even signed his own name on the receipt and used his driver’s license for identification, he said.

“It wasn’t a planned robbery,” Wiksell said. “It’s the result of a lifelong problem that Mr. Holland had, not of his choice, but what happened to him when he was young.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Don Glynn told jurors, however, that Holland’s life was all about choices.

Casting off the brain-damage argument by citing a lack of scientific proof, Glynn asked jurors to consider Holland’s previous five felony convictions and his decision to use illegal drugs since age 12.

The law, he said, also allows the jury to consider the value of the retired nurse’s life, how her love for travel, dancing and her friends at the Oxnard mobile home park where she lived was taken away with a bullet through the heart.

“Mildred’s dancing days are over,” Glynn told the jury. “The only proper penalty is the death penalty.”

Jurors recessed for the day shortly after 4 p.m. and are scheduled to continue deliberations today.