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Eliza
 Posted:
Tue Sep 23, 2008 2:09 am |
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Atlanta Courthouse killing spree trial begins
LINK
Atlanta courthouse rampage trial begins
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Brian Nichols, an escapee who killed 4 before taking a woman hostage in her home. The 2005 case has been plagued with delays and high costs.
By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 23, 2008
ATLANTA -- "It was a normal day of judicial proceedings," prosecutor Kellie Hill told the jury Monday. "A regular day of courtroom tranquillity -- until that man walked in a back door."
She pointed across the courtroom to the sullen, powerfully built man in a tan suit accused of killing four people in a 2005 rampage that started at a courthouse just a few blocks from here.
She then played an audiotape from the morning in March when he entered a courtroom with a gun shortly after having escaped from a sheriff's deputy. The tape began with the sound of a lawyer arguing her case. There were two thunderous booms, then a wail that sounded like an air-raid siren.
The horror and pandemonium that engulfed Atlanta in 2005 was now flooding a courtroom in 2008. The victims' relatives erupted in tears. There was an objection, and two packs of lawyers rushed the bench.
Brian Nichols' trial had finally begun, after 3½ years of delays and controversies.
Nichols, a computer engineer, made national news on March 11, 2005, when he gunned down a judge, a deputy and a court reporter in downtown Atlanta's Fulton County Courthouse.
The gunman's subsequent escape triggered the largest manhunt in Georgia history. During the next 26 hours, the gunman killed a federal agent and attempted to steal several cars.
The ordeal ended when a woman he kidnapped -- who placated him by reading him Christian self-help books -- escaped and called 911.
The courtroom was packed with victims' survivors, as well as Nichols' parents. Nichols has pleaded not guilty to all charges by reason of insanity. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
The opening statements unfolded under heavy security. In 2005, Nichols, a former football player, had been awaiting trial in a rape case when he punched a 51-year-old female deputy in the face then fled with her gun.
On Monday, a male sheriff's deputy who matched Nichols' brawn stood facing the defendant about 6 feet away. Nichols sat flanked by his team of court-appointed lawyers, occasionally scribbling on a piece of paper.
The criminal trial, with its 54-count indictment including four murder charges, has become the most complex and expensive in Georgia history. Its cost -- currently in the millions of dollars -- has threatened to cripple the state's indigent defense system. It has also sparked a fierce debate over how much should be spent on a man whose lawyers admit he is a killer.
On Monday, lead defense attorney Henderson Hill argued that Nichols should not be found guilty because he suffered from a "delusional disorder" that impaired his ability to know right from wrong.
Hill said that Nichols, who is African American, believed he was involved in an epic struggle to liberate black people. "In Brian Nichols' war," Hill said, "he believed that he was a slave rebelling against the United States government."
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Joined: 21 Feb 2008
Posts: 1273
Location: Deep in the hills with my Bible, rifle, and pony.
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| Eliza
Posted:
Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:29 am |
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Jury selected for Nichols trial
12-member panel begins hearing testimony Monday
By STEVE VISSER , JEFFRY SCOTT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
A majority female jury will decide whether Brian Nichols is a murderer and whether he should die for the crime.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge James Bodiford congratulated the glum-looking group of jurors at 2 p.m. Wednesday when he told them they would be hearing the case that is expected to last the rest of the year. They will start hearing testimony when they return for trial Monday.
Nichols is on trial for murder and other charges in the March 11, 2005, shooting deaths of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, his court stenographer, a sheriff’s deputy and a U.S. Customs Agent. Nichols allegedly murdered the victims after he broke free of custody at the courthouse, where he was on trial for rape.
The jury of 12 includes six black females, two white females, two black males, one white male, and one Asian male.
The ordeal of finding the jury took nine weeks and teams of prosecution and defense attorneys questioning more than 240 prospective jurors from Fulton County, as Superior Court Judge James Bodiford heard scores of motions and arguments from lawyers.
Now, those eight lawyers — four for the prosecution, four for the defense — will face a panel they sought to shape in their favor.
The defense sought jurors opposed to the death penalty and open to Nichols’ innocent-by-reason-of insanity defense. The prosecution sought jurors who would toss out the insanity arguments, find Nichols guilty of murder, and sentence him to death — instead of life in prison.
After the attorneys picked the 12 and six alternates on Wednesday, Bodiford asked in a cheerful voice: “Y’all happy with your jury?” If they weren’t, neither team wanted to signal otherwise.
“Absolutely,” said lead defense attorney Henderson Hill, who then looked over at lead prosecutor Kellie Hill, who smiled and nodded.
“Good,” said Bodiford, dryly. “Another thing you agree upon.”
Most of the jurors selected have said they didn’t want to serve. Here are thumbnails of most of the 12 who will hear the case, expected to last until Christmas, based on their testimony during jury selection.
JUROR NO. 5: Black male who studied at a technical college, works in construction and lives in northeast Atlanta. He said he began thinking about the death penalty at age 8 after his older brother was murdered. A friend’s son was also killed in a robbery and he has friends who are with the Atlanta Police Department. He favors capital punishment and wishes his brother’s killer had to pay with his life.
JUROR NO. 33: Black female who retired from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and now works as a contract employee for the agency. She knows Clint Rucker, one of the prosecutors, although he is not a close friend. The woman said she wasn’t opposed to capital punishment. “Could you vote for death for that man sitting there?” asked prosecutor Kellie Hill while she pointed at Nichols.
The woman paused, then answered with a barely audible quote: “Yes.”
JUROR NO. 41: Black female who lost her job in July when her company cut 165 people. She believes temporary insanity is possible but thinks it has been misused in the justice system. “At my age, I’m less likely to find people not guilty for reasons of insanity,” she said. She complained that the legal system has let the Nichols case stretch out forever. “To be honest, I’m kind of tired of hearing about it,” she said.
JUROR NO. 138: A black female, a mother and sales representative for Merck. She lived in California at the time of the courthouse shootings, and moved to Alpharetta in 2006. Her brother was once robbed. She said she is biased against Nichols but believed she could set that aside to sit on the jury. Prosecutor Clint Rucker asked if she considered herself an open-minded person? “Yes,” she said. “Don’t we all?”
JUROR NO. 132: Black female from Alabama. Her father was in the U.S. Army. She is a graduate of Georgia State University and works in management with AT&T. An active volunteer, she is also director of Adopt a Student, a mentoring program for students. She said the justice system is biased against blacks. Regarding Nichols, she said: “I don’t believe there’s a question whether he did it. I believe he did it.”
JUROR NO. 181: Black female who lives in Union City. She said she feared being in the same courtroom with Nichols: “Yesterday it was really hard, because I was arguing in my head where are the exits, and the police guards with the guns at their sides.” She said she wouldn’t want to be the deciding vote on whether to execute Nichols. “I wouldn’t want be the one who says, ‘Yes, kill him.’”
JUROR NO. 98: Black female who works as an evening shift supervisor at a company that distributes nuts, bolts and screws. She does the books for her church and she owns a .380-caliber pistol but has never fired it. In her jury questionnaire, she said she strongly opposed the death penalty. “So many people are wrongly sentenced and the death penalty will cause them death for something they didn’t do.”
JUROR NO. 115: South Asian male, who recently became an U.S. citizen. He has a master’s degree and works for Equifax, the company that employs the woman who accused Nichols of rape. He told attorneys he opposed the death penalty because it is ineffective. “Unless I’m given a good enough reason, I do not see how I can convince myself [to vote for death]. … I would impose death if I felt he was a danger to other people.”
JUROR NO. 157: White male who went to restaurant school in Philadelphia. He has family members who are lawyers and judges in other states. He now works with fish at an aquarium.
JUROR NO. 210: White female, high school graduate who formerly managed an Applebee’s restaurant and now works for a boxing company. She said she had knew little about the Nichols case and didn’t follow the news accounts during the manhunt for Nichols after the Fulton Courthouse shootings. “It was March and I’m Irish and we also have a lot of festivities about that time,” she explained. “I don’t watch TV news a lot and I don’t read the paper. I was too busy to pay attention.”
— Staff writer Rhonda Cook contributed to this story.
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Joined: 21 Feb 2008
Posts: 1273
Location: Deep in the hills with my Bible, rifle, and pony.
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| Eliza
Posted:
Thu Sep 25, 2008 4:19 am |
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THE STATE vs. BRIAN GENE NICHOLS
Jury hears tape of courthouse shootings
By STEVE VISSER, JEFFRY SCOTT, RHONDA COOK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, September 22, 2008
Just seven minutes into the prosecutor’s opening statement today, jurors in the Brian Nichols murder trial were brought chillingly back to the bedlam in another courtroom that day in March 2005 when Nichols was being tried for rape.
A tape recording made by court reporter Julie Ann Brandau in Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes’ courtroom captured the drama of the gunshots that killed her and Barnes.
Played by lead prosecutor Kellie Hill, the tape at first began with what Hill called a moment of “regular courtroom tranquility” of a lawyer’s argument to the court — until the first BANG rang out.
Then, the apparent confusion of stunned civil lawyers and a second shot, four seconds later. Shrieking erupted.
“DON’T HURT ME DON’T HURT ME,” came the breathless plea of a woman. “HELP DON”T HURT ME.”
The screams of Barnes’s staff attorney were recorded as Brandau fell across her, fatally shot through the head.
Hill said Barnes had been shot in the head from behind. As the lawyers in the rape case fled the courtroom, they had to step over Barnes’ body.
In Monday’s courtroom audience, Brandau’s daughter, Christina Scholte, listened to the shots and the shrieking. She wept into her hands.
Brian G. Nichols faces a 54-count indictment, including four murder charges, for the March 11, 2005 courthouse shootings. Facing the death penalty, he has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Hill described the courtroom ambush that day as the work of a “cold-blooded, conniving, evil and extremely, extremely dangerous mind” of a desperate man who feared he was facing conviction at his second trial for rape.
Hill said the prosecution in the rape case had planned to call its last witness against Nichols for rape that day and jury deliberations were upon him.
“He knew something had to be done,” Hill said.
She told the court in her opening statement that Nichols had got to Barnes’ courtroom after savagely beating his guard, sheriff’s Deputy Cynthia Hall, after she took off his handcuffs so he could change into street clothes for trial. Hall was beaten so badly, Hill said, that an emergency room doctor thought she had been shot in the head. Hall, who suffered brain damage, may not be able to testify, Hill said.
After the shootings, Nichols didn’t flee the courtroom immediately, Hill said.
Instead he returned to Barnes’ chambers where he had tied up the judge’s staff and a visiting lawyer before the gunfire erupted. Hill said Nichols was looking to settle one last score.
“He looked into that room but luckily… the victim in the rape case, was late,” Hill said.
When Nichols made his exit down a staircase to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, he fired his gun into the air to create pandemonium, Hill said.
“But Nichols, she said, didn’t flee. He waited.
When people started running, he didn’t,” Hill said. “Instead he turned around and pointed those guns and when Sgt (Hoyt) Teasley came out that door, he fired four times. He ambushed him.”
The prosecutor then went over what she described were Nichols’ deliberate steps to mislead police by committing multiple carjackings before hiding the last car in the parking garage where he had taken it from its owner and then taking MARTA to Buckhead.
In Buckhead, she said, Nichols tried to kidnap another woman so he could use her apartment as a hiding place. But after taking her to the apartment, he was surprised by the woman’s boyfriend, who was already inside the apartment. The two fought in the hallway before Nichols fled, Hill said.
It was that flight that led him to David Wilhelm, an off-duty federal agent, who was doing tile work at a house he was renovating, Hill said. Nichols shot Wilhelm, paralyzing him, and then picked his pockets and stole his truck as he lay dying, the prosecutor said.
He drove to Gwinnett where “he met someone as smart as he was,” Hill said.
That person, Ashley Smith, was kidnapped by Nichols at gunpoint but “she gave him clothes, she gave him drugs, she cooked for him and she did whatever it took to stay alive.”
Smith tricked Nichols into believing he could trust her and let Smith leave to see her daughter, Hill said. Smith called police. Lead defense lawyer Henderson Hill tried to make Hill’s vivid opening statement irrelevant by focusing on Nichols’ mental health, saying that his delusions were true.
“Smart is not the question,” Henderson Hill said. “It is how the mind processes information.”
The lawyer said that Nichols was a man who started going downhill mentally as his relationship with his former girlfriend, whom he was later charged with raping, unraveled.
The defense lawyer, a nationally known death-penalty litigator from Charlotte, described Nichols’ relationship with the former girlfriend as “a loving relationship.”
The defense lawyer acknowledged to jurors that it is difficult to explain that Nichols was insane, suffering from a delusional disorter at the time of the killings, when he looked so calm and together today, dressed in a sharp brown wool suit, white shirt and brown tie — the very picture of stability.
“It is a challenge,” he said.
——
In earlier developments, the Nichols murder trial lost its first juror today.
Juror #17 wrote the court that he had strong feelings about Nichols and asked to be excused for “emotional,” “mental” and “dental” reasons.
The tooth excuse was not explained.
But none of the excuses impressed Superior Court James Bodiford.
The judge admonished the 30-something man about shirking his civic duty — and quickly let him know why he would still feel the pain of jury duty but would do so solo.
“It is sort of like being out in the battlefield and deserting — you leave everybody else to do the work,” Bodiford told the juror who tried to escape duty on the cusp of trial. “You are a shadow juror. You still have the same rules…. You have to wear your juror badge every day.”
The no-nonsense judge put the juror in the judicial equivalent of high-school detention.
He required the juror to attend the Nichols trial — which is expected to last until Christmas — and sit in the audience but he won’t be able to participate in deciding Nichols’ fate.
“There is no such thing as quitting the case,” Bodiford told the jury shortly after swearing them in at 10:51 a.m. in explaining why one of its number wasn’t in the box. “He will be fed lunch just like you will but he is not going to be in the same room.”
The judge also cleared the courtroom audience of everyone except families of the victims, District Attorney Paul Howard, Nichols’ family, assorted members of the defense and prosecution teams, a pool television cameraman and a pool newspaper photographer.
In a video, the judge read the 54-count indictment to the jury.
At 11:12 a.m, Nichols, 36, officially entered his plea: not guilty by reason of insanity.
Opening statements are expected to begin after lunch and expected to take most of the afternoon.
Nichols’ defense team moved again today to delay the trial but Bodiford refused.
“It is no surprise to the lawyers and to any observers that I am denying the continuance,” Bodiford said. “There has got to be a deadline… and we have reached our deadline.”
Nichols’ trial is being held at Atlanta Municipal Court, a few blocks from the county courthouse where he escaped his rape trial on March 11, 2005.
Every seat was taken in the small sixth-floor courtroom as the proceedings began. Nichols’ parents sat a few feet from their son, while across the aisle were several relatives of the four people killed during his escape and rampage. Some had hugged and shed quiet tears as they entered the courtroom.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the killing of Judge Rowland Barnes, court stenographer Julie Ann Brandau, Fulton deputy Hoyt Keith Teasley and agent David Wilhelm of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, all of whom were shot during Nichols’ escape while on trial for rape.
Moore, in asking for a delay, said Nichols’ team had not reviewed hundreds of hours of tape recordings of Nichols’ phone conversations while in jail or interviewed “a significant number” of what he described as the state’s 600 witnesses.
Lead prosecution attorney Kellie Hill countered that the defense has a list of state witnesses and it is “significantly” less than the 600 Moore cited.
“We believe they have had years to review the discovery in this case and prepare for this trial,” said Hill.
Of the witnesses to be called, she said the “The state planned to use only a few number of those calls, and we have provided the defense a list of those call we intended to use.”
Moore, who joined the defense team last spring, said it had made clear to the court that it needed several months to prepare properly. Moore last spring had asked Bodiford to delay the trial until January, which the judge denied.
The trial was delayed in 2007 when Senior Superior Court Judge Hilton Fuller, who first had the case, delayed jury selection for more than a year in an attempt to force the state to release more money for the defense, which had spent well-above $1.2 million at that time.
A jury of six black women, two white women, two black men, one white man and one Asian man are hearing the case. They were selected after a nine-week process in which more than 240 prospective jurors were questioned.
Bodiford, a Cobb County jurist appointed after Fuller stepped down, has said he hopes for a verdict by Christmas.
Bodiford, having heard defense complaints during jury selection that there was a “circus-like atmosphere” in the court, on Monday morning laid down rules about media coverage. He denied a defense plea to abandon a second, remotely operated, camera in the courtroom.
But he said that while the media is allowed to have cameras, anybody in the audience who tried to take pictures with cell phones would be dealt with severely.
“They would go to jail, and it would be in a Marietta minute,” said Bodiford.
Georgia taxpayers are paying to defend Nichols, to prosecute him, to protect him and to house him. Some estimates are that it will ultimately cost taxpayers at least $5 million to prosecute and defend Nichols.
Already Fulton County has spent almost $954,000. The county also cancelled a $376,000 debt the city of Atlanta owed for court services in exchange for use of the entire sixth floor of the Municipal Court.
Barnes’ widow recently won a $5.1 million lawsuit against Fulton County for her husband’s death in his courtroom that fateful day. Brandau’s daughter was awarded a $5.2 million settlement a few days ago.
And by the time the trial is over, Fulton County will have spent at least another $118,534 just for juror expenses and more than $151,000 for overtime for deputies assigned to the trial. Fulton is expecting to spend even more because the county is now picking up the expense of one of Nichols’ four attorneys and there are several months of billable hours not yet worked.
At one County Commission meeting in July, the county manager warned another $1.8 million may be needed.
Controversies surrounding its expenses and delays may have been the death-knell of a state system that had just been created at the time of the crimes to eliminate the inequities of a hodge-podge of indigent defense systems.
“This is a tragic case that comes along once every 50 years,” said Stephen Bright, who teaches law at Georgetown and Yale Universities.
“It’s too bad it couldn’t be handled in a way that didn’t result in consequences for the judiciary and the representation of poor people,” said Bright, a veteran death penalty defense attorney.
The financial — and political — drain of the case has crippled, and maybe destroyed the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, said Bright and Michael Mears, another lawyer who previously headed the council.
Mears recalls that he had “several heated discussions” over state funding with legislators who “want to use the Nichols case to destroy the indigent defense system because of how much it’s costing and how much we should have not been paying for this defense.”
Much more
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Joined: 21 Feb 2008
Posts: 1273
Location: Deep in the hills with my Bible, rifle, and pony.
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| gwen
Posted:
Thu Sep 25, 2008 7:35 am |
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Nichols jurors see photos, video of rampage
Former Fulton deputy: I suspected he might be plotting something
By STEVE VISSER, JEFFRY SCOTT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The images jurors watched Wednesday were silent and disquieting.
Brian Nichols, captured in the freeze frames of a video surveillance camera as he overpowered a deputy — hitting her so hard in the face her feet left the ground — then, about 4 1/2 minutes later, leaving the holding cell at the Fulton County Courthouse.
These were the first few minutes of a rampage that began about 9 a.m. March 11, 2005, a rampage that would end with four people dead and the biggest manhunt in Atlanta history.
Nichols has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
His lawyers contend a delusion made him view himself as unjustly persecuted by the justice system because he is black. Prosecutors say Nichols was methodical and conniving, not insane, and are seeking the death penalty.
For the first time in his murder trial, jurors saw pictures connected to the grisly sounds they heard during opening arguments, when the prosecution played an audiotape of gunshots and screams as Judge Rowland Barnes and court reporter Julie Ann Brandau were gunned down by Nichols, a few minutes after he escaped from the holding cell.
Wednesday’s testimony built all day to the dramatic moment when the still images, then the video, were played for the jury as prosecuting attorney Clint Rucker questioned video technician Michael Ganoe.
In the morning, a former Fulton County sheriff’s deputy testified that Nichols, who was in custody and on trial for rape, seemed to have won the confidence of guard Cynthia Hall two days before he attacked her in the holding cell.
Sharon Pauls, now a Clayton County patrol officer, said she became suspicious Nichols might be plotting something because he disobeyed her orders and acted in ways not typical of inmates.
But Hall, who usually guarded Nichols during the rape trial, chatted with the inmate in the manner of friends, and he seemed to have won special concessions from her, Pauls said.
“They seemed to be quite familiar with each other,” Pauls said. “They talked about the case, what had happened in court, they talked about their children.”
Pauls also testified that two days before the attack, she noticed Nichols wasn’t wearing leg shackles.
“Was that common?” asked prosecutor Michele McCutcheon.
“It was uncommon,” Pauls said. “Deputy Hall stated we didn’t need to put leg irons on him.”
Pauls, suspicious, ordered Nichols strip-searched after court that day. Two metal hinges, which she said could be used as weapons, were found in Nichols’ shoes. “There were just red flags all over the place,” she said.
Wednesday’s second witness was Fulton County detention Officer Dexter Jenkins, the officer who had found the metal hinges.
Jenkins said security was lax with Nichols the morning of the attack, and that he was surprised the powerfully built inmate was escorted alone by a single female deputy to the holding cell.
Prosecutors said that when Nichols attacked Hall, he beat her so savagely she was left brain-damaged and probably won’t be able to testify at trial.
Nichols is accused of having taken Hall’s gun and using it to kill Barnes, the judge in his rape trial, and Brandau. He also is accused of ambushing and killing deputy Hoyt Teasley, who had pursued him, and off-duty federal agent David Wilhelm during a robbery while on the run.
Pauls said Nichols knew the rape trial was not going well for him. Earlier, another jury had hung on whether to convict him. Pauls said she heard Nichols tell prosecutor Ash Joshi that “he was doing a better job than the first time.”
The former guard said Nichols was so cagey, he tried to create a mistrial while she was escorting him to the courtroom by trying to let a juror in the hallway see him in handcuffs. Jurors aren’t permitted to see a defendant in shackles or handcuffs because of fears it would undermine a fair trial.
Pauls also said she had to admonish Nichols twice about trying to carry ink pens out of the courtroom in his Bible. Regular pens, which can be used as weapons, are contraband. The jail supplies inmates with pens made of rubber.
“I said, ‘Nichols, I told you before not to take pens out of your courtroom,’ ” Pauls testified. “And he said, ‘I don’t have a pen.’ I said, ‘Yes, you do. It is in your Bible.’ “
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2008/09/24/nichols_3.html
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AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 14370
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| gwen
Posted:
Fri Sep 26, 2008 4:23 pm |
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Nichols had easy access to judge’s chambers
By STEVE VISSER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, September 26, 2008
Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes left the door open for Brian Nichols.
“He didn’t believe in locking the public out,” said Susan Christy, who was the case manager for Barnes. “He had an open-door policy. Anybody could come in and see the judge.”
On the call box in the hallway outside the judge’s chambers, a sticky note was placed.
“What did the sticky note say?” prosecutor Kellie Hill asked Christy today at Nichols’ murder trial.
“Open,” said Christy, who was the first person to testify Friday morning.
Most judge’s chambers are behind locked doors. That Barnes purposely kept his open was another key security flaw at the Fulton County Courthouse, allowing Nichols to enter the judge’s chambers unannounced with a gun. Once there, prosecutors say, he tied up Christy, staffer Gina Clarke and Deputy Sheriff Grantley White, the bailiff.
Then, prosecutors say, he murdered Barnes and his court reporter Julie Ann Brandau who were in a hearing for a civil case in the courtroom before Nichols rape trial was to resume that day, March 11, 2005.
Normally Lynn Carter, the judge’s secretary, might have seen Nichols enter by a camera that monitored the doorway. But Carter was on vacation that day, Christy said. Even if the secretary had been working, she might not have looked at the monitor. Nichols managed to enter without disturbing the wind chimes that hung on the door, Christy said.
She said Nichols acted different than most defendants “but not in a bad way.”
“He would talk to you,” Christy said. “He just seemed very friendly, nice,” she said.
“When he was friendly to you, did it put you more at ease with him?” Hill asked.
“Oh, yes, ma’am.”
She said she never saw anything from Nichols to suggest that he was hostile toward the judge or the prosecutors. “He was very calm,” she said of Nichols.
Both Christy and Clarke have filed lawsuits against the Fulton County Sheriff Office for security lapses that allowed Nichols to escape that day. The women, who were not physically harmed, are asking $3 million for the terror and continuing emotional distress they say they suffered that day.
Christy’s emotions came to the surface this morning when Hill showed her a picture of a judge in a robe and asked her if it was Barnes. “Yes,” said Christy, her voice catching and tears springing as she described the man for whom she had worked for more than seven years.
The judge would regularly have breakfast with Brandau and Christy in chambers before court started in the morning. At lunch, they would generally sit around a table and play “The Birthday Game,” in which the judge would read the celebrity birthdays from the newspaper, and everyone would try to guess their ages for bragging rights.
His office table contained a collection of more than 30 stuffed animals. Chihuahuas were a favorite in photographs shown this morning in Fulton County Superior Court.
“He always reminded me of Santa Claus,” she said of the stout judge with a white beard. “We were like family. We weren’t just coworkers. He treated his whole staff as a family.”
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Nichols, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Besides Barnes and Brandau, he is accused of murdering Fulton County Sheriff Deputy Hoyt Teasley who tried to arrest him on a street outside the courthouse and David Wilhelm, an off-duty federal agent killed during a robbery while Nichols was on the run.
Nichols is also accused of serious aggravated assault of Deputy Cynthia Hall, who suffered brain damage and is now blind in her right eye.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2008/09/26/nichols_trial_atlanta.html
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AKA Gagal_05
Joined: 24 Feb 2007
Posts: 14370
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| gwen
Posted:
Fri Nov 07, 2008 3:26 pm |
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Courthouse shooter guilty of murder, faces death
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A jury convicted Brian Nichols of murdering four people in a shooting rampage that began at a courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia. He faces another hearing to determine whether he should be executed.
Jurors returned the verdict to a hushed courtroom a few minutes before 3 p.m. on Friday. They deliberated for about 12 hours over two days.
Nichols, 36, stood in silence as the verdicts were read. He was found guilty of all 54 charges including murder, kidnapping, robbery and escape in the March 2005 rampage that began at the Fulton County Courthouse.
Jurors will return to court Monday morning for the trial's death penalty phase.
Nichols confessed to the killings but claimed he was legally insane and was gripped by a delusional compulsion that he was a slave rebelling against authority. Jurors rejected defense arguments that he was legally insane or mentally ill at the time.
A judge, a court reporter, a deputy and a federal agent were killed in the gunfire.
Nichols was accused of overpowering Fulton County sheriff's deputy Cynthia Hall on March 11, 2005, as he was being led into a courtroom where he was facing a second trial on rape charges.
Officials say he took Hall's gun from a lockbox and fatally shot three people at the courthouse: Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, court reporter Julie Ann Brandau and Fulton County sheriff's Sgt. Hoyt Teasley, who attempted to apprehend him outside the building.
Nichols also was convicted killing David Wilhelm, a federal customs agent, hours later at Wilhelm's home in the Buckhead section of Atlanta.
He was arrested in suburban Gwinnett County 26 hours after his escape, where authorities say he held a woman hostage in her apartment, following the largest manhunt in Georgia history, one that triggered panic in the Atlanta area.
Prosecutors have said Nichols confessed to the shootings shortly after his arrest. The defense did not dispute whether he was the gunman, focusing instead on his mental state and claiming he suffers from a disorder that "overmastered" his will to refrain from criminal acts.
The jury is made up of five African-American women, two white women, three African-American men, a white man and an Asian-American man, court officials said. Their options were to convict Nichols, find him guilty but mentally ill, acquit him or find him not guilty by reason of insanity.
In the penalty phase, jurors will hear impact statements from the victims' relatives and decide whether to spare Nichols' life.
Nichols' trial has been plagued by delays. In October 2007, Judge Hilton Fuller of DeKalb County, who was appointed to hear the case, abruptly halted jury selection on what would have been its third day, accepting a defense motion to stop the trial until questions of funding for Nichols' lawyers were resolved.
In January, Fuller recused himself from the case after a New Yorker magazine article written by Jeffrey Toobin, who is also a CNN senior legal analyst, quoted him as saying the "only defense" open to Nichols was insanity, "because everyone in the world knows he did it."
Also in January, Nichols' defense attorneys said in court filings that they intended to utilize a mental-illness defense, claiming Nichols suffered from a "delusional compulsion" at the time of the slayings.
They said he has been diagnosed with a disorder that involves delusions of persecution, as well as grandiose thinking. Those suffering from such a disorder may function normally and behave rationally, defense attorneys said, but when they encounter circumstances that "touch their delusions, the delusional disorder will preoccupy them and instruct their thinking and actions."
The Gwinnett County woman Nichols was accused of taking hostage, Ashley Smith, has written a book and spoken publicly about how she kicked her addiction to methamphetamine after the ordeal. During their seven hours together, she has said, she gave Nichols drugs but refused to use them with him -- and has not used them since.
In a October 2005 appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live," Smith said she was able to gain Nichols' trust and persuade him to surrender quietly after reading passages to him from Rick Warren's best-selling book "The Purpose-Driven Life" and calling on God for help.
Smith, who has married and is now known as Ashley Smith Robinson, testified at Nichols' trial.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/07/nichols.courthouse.shooting/index.html
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