Bio

Dallas Bernard Holiday was born in December 1962. By 1986, he had prior felony convictions on his record. Questions about his intellectual capacity were raised during his legal proceedings, his case was later returned to the trial court in June 1990 specifically to address a claim of intellectual disability (referred to in the case record using the terminology of the time, "mental retardation").

Murder Story

On the night of March 10–11, 1986, Holiday broke into a home and stole two firearms, a .32 caliber pistol and a .380 automatic. On the morning of March 11, 1986, 66-year-old Leon Johnson Williams left for his usual early-morning walk; his wife, who often accompanied him, stayed home that day.

According to Holiday's own confession, he was riding his bicycle when he spotted Williams walking and decided to attack him from behind with one of the stolen guns in order to rob him. The blow failed to knock Williams unconscious, so Holiday forced him toward a nearby wooded area. As Williams begged for his life, Holiday took his wallet and watch and ordered him to lie down, then struck him two or three more times in the head with a brick. When Williams remained alive, Holiday retrieved his second gun and shot him in the head.

After the killing, Holiday went to a nearby house intending to commit another burglary. When no one answered the door, he broke in through a rear sliding glass door. A neighbor, Barbara Buckner, had been in the shower at the time; upon discovering the break-in, she ran to the Williams home to call for help, unaware that Williams himself was already dead. Mrs. Williams drove her to the police station since their own phone line was not working. When police arrived at the Buckner home, Holiday was still inside; he fled out the back door and evaded capture on foot for nearly an hour before eventually being caught.

During the chase, Holiday dropped the .32 caliber pistol he had used in the shooting. Ballistics testing later confirmed that a bullet recovered from beneath the victim's scalp had been fired from that weapon. Additional physical evidence, a broken piece of a gun stock, a magazine spring, and a follower recovered near the scene of the earlier struggle, was matched to the .380 automatic later recovered from a female companion of Holiday's.

Williams's disappearance had been reported to police that afternoon after he failed to return home by lunchtime. Later that evening, a sheriff investigating the area found signs of a struggle near an old pond site and followed a trail of blood into the nearby woods, where Williams's body was discovered. An autopsy found he had been struck in the head at least seven times with a blunt object, consistent with either a gun butt or a brick similar to one recovered at the scene, and had multiple defensive wounds to his hands, including a finger nearly severed by a laceration. The cause of death was determined to be the gunshot wound to the head.

Holiday was interrogated following his arrest and confessed in detail to the attack, admitting he had stolen the guns in the burglary the night before and describing his actions during the killing as outlined above. He was convicted and sentenced to death in November 1986 in Jefferson County. In 1988, the Georgia Supreme Court addressed his direct appeal in Holiday v. State, 258 Ga. 393, 369 S.E.2d 241 (1988). His case was later returned to the trial court in June 1990 specifically on the question of whether he was intellectually disabled, a significant issue in Georgia, which in 1988 became the first U.S. state to prohibit the execution of intellectually disabled defendants, though it applies an unusually strict "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof for such claims that has proven difficult for many defendants to meet.

Dallas Bernard Holiday remains on Georgia's death row as of the most recent available state correctional record, from December 2023.