Shopper’s Murderer Receives Life Term

Ignoring Alan Brett Holland’s last-ditch plea for death, a Ventura judge sentenced the Hollywood drifter to life in prison Thursday for shooting a shopper through the heart in a Ventura parking lot.

Judge Vincent J. O’Neill could not impose a harsher sentence than that recommended by jurors.

But in a rambling 14-page letter to the judge, Holland pleaded for execution, saying he thought that jurors had condemned him to a fate worse than death.

“In my opinion I had in fact been given the worst of the two as far as punishment is concerned by rotting and dying a slow death in prison,” he wrote.

He wrote that his odd demeanor during the guilt phase of the trial, and even the remorseless letter he wrote to the prosecutor, were designed to encourage jurors to deliver a death sentence.

But his plan backfired, instead convincing jurors that he was not a carjacker but an extremely disturbed young man.

His feet shackled, Holland appeared upbeat in court, chatting amiably with his defense attorney.

Then he asked to speak before his sentence was read.

“I guess I’d just like to say . . . I want to apologize to Mrs. Wilson’s family, to her brother and sister. After seeing their heartfelt pain I’d like to say I’m sorry. I know a lot of people say that I am doing this to get leniency, but because this is set in concrete, I hope they might find it in themselves to forgive me.”

The judge acknowledged the apology, then sentenced Holland to life in prison without parole.

Holland also received an additional 21 years on various other counts that will kick in should his current conviction be overturned.

O’Neill said life in prison was an appropriate punishment for the murder of 65-year-old Mildred Wilson.

“To think that a mile from here a woman who decides to go shopping pays for it with her life,” he said.

Holland, 31, approached Wilson in the parking lot of the Poinsettia mall in 1996 and asked her for change.

But Wilson began berating him for begging, Holland said, so he pulled out a gun and shot her.

As Wilson toppled into a flower bed, Holland jumped in her car and fled.

Under a new California law that makes a murder committed in the course of a carjacking punishable by death, the jury convicted Holland of first-degree murder in the first part of the trial.

Then, Holland said in his letter, he hatched a plan to foil his defense attorney’s attempts to save his life.

He wrote to the prosecution saying he shot Wilson because she insulted him--not because he intended to rob her.

“I killed the ol’ goat because she didn’t shut up,” Holland had written. “I feel no remorse, and I also feel no guilt.”

During the penalty phase of the trial, Holland took the stand against the advice of his attorney, using that opportunity to flip off jury members and call them “scumbags.”

Indeed, he wrote that he even discussed with fellow inmate Michael Raymond Johnson what he could do to provoke the jurors.

Johnson, who received the death penalty last week for fatally shooting Sheriff’s Deputy Peter J. Aguirre, proofread the letter for him.

“He was convinced that would assuredly do it [get the death penalty], with flippen the jury off and cursing them,” Holland wrote.

But that letter--despite its tone--caused jurors to doubt their earlier verdict and caused them, ultimately, to reject the death penalty.

“The letter he wrote changed everyone’s mind,” juror Chris Lodter said last month.

Ironically, had the contents of the letter been heard during the first part of the trial, Holland might have been convicted of a lesser crime.

But now it makes no difference, except to perhaps increase Holland’s chances of winning an appeal.

Holland, however, said he does not wish to appeal. He wants to die.

“I don’t ever want to see another courtroom again,” he wrote in his entreaty to the judge.

Defense attorney Willard Wiksell will file a notice of appeal as required by law. Holland then will have 60 days to decide whether to go forward with an appeal.

Before the sentencing, Wiksell made a motion for a new trial, because evidence in the penalty phase suggested that the carjacking was an afterthought.

The motion was denied.

Outside the courtroom, Wiksell was brief.

“He should have told them upfront,” he said. “He has to live with the consequences.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Don Glynn appeared satisfied with the result.

“This is a guy who never told the truth,” Glynn said.

According to the probation report, Wilson’s brother, Ian Ferguson, found that the jury sentence was “not very satisfactory.”

Holland agrees.

During his incarceration, he tried to commit suicide once, slashing his arm with a razor. As he waited for the ambulance to come, he said, “I didn’t mean to shoot her. I didn’t know she would die when I shot her. I don’t want to go to prison. I’m not responsible. I just want to die.”

And over and over again in his letter to the judge, he says he is not normal--that something is wrong with him.

“I’ve become a violent monster since my family reunion in 1995,” he wrote. “I can’t even explain it. Something is definitely wrong with me. I would rather die than hurt another human being.”