On Monday, James Holland is expected to face jurors again for the sixth time since June.
But this time, Holland may vigorously fight charges in the 16-year-old murder that investigators initially blamed on another man.
Holland’s friend, Christopher Jackson, was just weeks away from facing trial in February 2006 in the 1991 slaying of Lisa Shaw when investigators released him from jail. Jackson was charged in the death of his former girlfriend after the case was reopened in 2004.
But a stunning admission, authorities said Holland admitted he killed Shaw during a police interview concerning his involvement in several attacks and robberies of women near the Eastern Michigan University campus.
Holland, who had been listed as a key witness after apparently telling police that Jackson shared details of Shaw’s slaying with him, quickly became the prime suspect. Charges against Jackson were dropped.
Holland has a lengthy criminal history dating back to 1985, including a 1991 bank robbery conviction that sent him to prison for 13 years. Shaw was killed two months before Holland’s arrest on bank robbery charges.
Holland is accused of strangling Shaw in her residence in Bryn Mawr Apartments in Ypsilanti Township on May 25, 1991. The 19-year-old was found bound with a phone cord, police said.
Holland was released from prison in April 2004, then jailed in January 2006 when an acquaintance accused him of attacking her in her Ypsilanti Township apartment.
A seventh trial on that case was scheduled over the summer, but Holland pleaded guilty to aggravated assault before jury selection in exchange for a one-year prison sentence to run concurrent with his other sentences in the rape and robbery convictions. His earliest prison release date is listed as September 3006, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections.
