Nichols trial holdouts: ‘Show me something’

Tijuana Wade was surprised she was picked to be a juror judging Brian Nichols.

In questions she answered from prosecutors and defense lawyers before the trial, the car auction employee said she probably could not sanction an execution of the notorious courthouse killer.

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John Spink / jspink@ajc.com

Brian Nichols was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the March 11, 2005, courthouse shootings.

PHOTOS
• A look at the case 2005-present
• Penalty phase | Verdict
• Weeks in court:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

• Interactive graphic: The 2005 shootings
• Video: Nichols' confession

MORE STORIES

• 4 years after attacks, courthouse lacks security plan 
• Gwinnett won't prosecute Nichols for kidnapping 
• Feds won't seek death penalty for Nichols 
• In prison, cellphone is coveted contraband 
• Police reveal little about Nichols manhunt errors 
• Nichols trial holdouts: 'Show me something' 

• Nichols says he was at war with U.S. government in taped confession
• AJC's full trial coverage

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“I said I was against the death penalty,” Wade, 35, recalled Monday, on her first day back at work in nearly three months. “I said I pretty much had my mind made up. I don’t want to kill anyone. The defense must have been for me.”

But as it turns out, Wade was one of the nine jurors who voted for the death penalty. And she said she was vocal in trying to sway the jury holdouts, two women and one man.

“Some jurors already had their minds made up” both for and against the death penalty, she said. “The other three were stuck on [the fact] that it’s still a life.”

Nichols escaped the death penalty when the Fulton County jury deadlocked 9-3. State law requires a unanimous jury for a death penalty, so Superior Court Judge James Bodiford sentenced Nichols to life in prison without parole for the March 11, 2005, courthouse shootings.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has attempted to contact most of the jurors for information on the deliberations, especially input from the three who voted in the minority. So far, four have talked — all of them indicating they were in the pro-death majority — including two who spoke out in a press conference on Saturday, identifying themselves only as jurors No. 8 and No. 12.

A fourth juror, who also declined to give her name, said on Sunday that the three holdouts had their minds made up from the beginning of the 40 hours of deliberations.

Lead prosecutor Kellie Hill said the trio had all said during questioning by lawyers during jury selection that they would be willing to impose the death penalty. Hill said she asked one of them specifically if she could vote for death for Nichols.

“She looked at me and she said ‘yes,’ ” Hill said. “And the other woman who we understand was a holdout, there was nothing about her answers that I thought made her weak on death.”

Hill said the third holdout, a male, was ambivalent on the subject but didn’t come down as strongly opposed to the death penalty.

Wade said the holdouts did ask their counterparts for reasons they should change their minds.

“They kept saying, ‘Show me something. Show me something.’ But nothing we said made a difference.

“They’d keep saying, ‘He had a bad childhood.’ But everyone has had something happen to them in their lives.

“The two women kept saying, ‘Mental illness, mental illness. Maybe he didn’t show remorse because of mental illness,’ ” she said.

“They said, ‘We have to sleep with ourselves.’ Well, we all have to sleep with ourselves.”

Wade said she grew to support the ultimate penalty after coming to see Nichols as conniving and remorseless. And as a ruthless man who meant business.

“Everything he said he’d try to do, he did,” said Wade. She referred to a threat Nichols made after raping his girlfriend if she called police. “He said he’d wait 20 years [in prison] and get her … and her mom.”

“I was kind of wishy-washy. I didn’t want to kill anyone,” said Wade. “But I was worried he’d get out.”

Wade told attorneys during jury selection that she was afraid of being in the same courtroom with Nichols, even planning how to escape if necessary.

Asked then if she could vote to sentence Nichols to death, she said: “I can be open for listening. [But] I wouldn’t want be the one who says ‘Yes, kill him.’ ” But the evidence against Nichols was overwhelming, she said.

Pro-death jurors believed Nichols would continue plotting in prison to escape.

The letters Nichols wrote to a Connecticut woman, who had a romantic fixation on Nichols, influenced Wade, she said. The woman plotted to help him escape again.

Nichols wrote: “It’s all about tactical maneuvering and psychological warfare, my darling … We must make the enemy believe one thing while we do another.”

Pro-death jurors thought the portion they heard of a taped phone conversation Nichols had with his brother was especially damning. They asked to hear the entire tape to help sway the three.

On that tape, Nichols admits he killed four people and says “I’d do it again” and would, next time, stop on the prosecutors’ floor of the courthouse to shoot again.

“We thought it would change their minds,” Wade said. The three “wanted to hear more negative stuff that he said.”

But Bodiford said the jury could hear only the portion of the tape that was in evidence.

“So we said, ‘Forget it,’ ” Wade said.

— Staff writer Jeffry Scott contributed to this article.