Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard will find himself in an uncomfortable place today: the witness chair.

Superior Court Judge James Bodiford ruled Tuesday that Howard must testify about charges of prosecutorial misconduct. He will also have to answer whether he obstructed justice or perjured himself in previous sworn testimony in a tangential issue raised in the Brian Nichols murder trial.

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John Spink/jspink@ajc.com

Judge James Bodiford ruled Tuesday the Paul Howard must answer whether he obstructed justice or perjured himself in previous sworn testimony.

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Bodiford explained he didn’t think the testimony is relevant to the Nichols case, but he said he was allowing the testimony because Nichols’ death-penalty trial would be scrutinized by appellate courts.

The situation could prove embarrassing to Howard. When he testified in a deposition last year, he was combative and he halted his testimony.

The dispute concerned one of his former top prosecutors, Gayle Abramson, who was prosecuting Nichols on a rape charge when he escaped from custody and killed four people. Nichols has admitted the killings and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Nichols’ attorneys have claimed Abramson’s “gross misconduct” while on a trip to California in 2004 raised questions about her judgment when she was prosecuting Nichols in 2005 because she wouldn’t offer less than a 15-year sentence on charges of kidnapping and raping his former girlfriend.

In a previous statement to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Abramson said while on that trip she believed she was given a drug at a party without her consent and sexually assaulted.

Abramson did not report the incident to police. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution does not routinely identify sexual assault victims but Abramson went public in her statement to the AJC.

Nichols’ lawyers accused Howard of covering up for Abramson — now a witness in Nichols’ case — and asked Bodiford to bar the death penalty and certain evidence and to sanction the district attorney.

Bodiford warned lead defense attorney Henderson Hill of Charlotte about engaging in a fishing expedition in pursing the otherwise unrelated issues involving a Buckhead murder case by calling to the witness stand Howard and prosecutor Sheila Ross, who heads Howard cold-case squad and prosecuted the other murder in 2006.

“If it appears to me they are just brought in to be beat up on, I’m going to stop it,” Bodiford said Tuesday. “If it is just a fishing expedition to make Mr. Howard look bad, I’m going to fix it.”

Hill assured the judge he had good grounds to believe Howard had covered up prosecutorial misconduct by Abramson. Howard testified on the issue in a deposition for Hill. The transcript reveals a combative Howard who would not answer Hill’s question and resented being questioned about the old murder case.

“We attempted to conduct a deposition of Mr. Howard but we were stonewalled,” Hill told Bodiford. Bodiford recommended to prosecutor Chris Quinn, who will handle Howard’s testimony, that his boss restrain himself. “It is going to go much smoother if they come in here and answer all the questions,” Bodiford said.