After 14 days of jury selection, 101 prospective jurors have been questioned and 40 placed in the pool of "qualified" jurors that will eventually reach 100.

From that group, 18 jurors and alternates will be selected to decide the fate of courthouse murder suspect Brian Nichols.

Alison Church / Special (ENLARGE)

Brian Nichols talks with his defense lawyer Robert McGlasson, right, in the new courtroom setting of the Atlanta Municipal Court as they wait for the jury selection proceedings to continue in the trial on Saturday.

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Through Saturday, the pace of juror selection is on track for the trial to start around the first week of September. Twice this week Superior Court Judge James Bodiford hinted he expects the trial to be over by December.

Lawyers' and the judge's questions have essentially been the same for each prospective juror throughout the jury selection.

What are their opinions on the death penalty? How much did they know — and what did they believe — from media accounts about the March 11, 2005, shootings of a judge, court reporter and deputy at the Fulton County Courthouse and a federal agent later that day.

Even with the same jurors, the questions are repeated many times, and finally one juror called attorneys on that practice.

"That was the same question you asked before, and I want to qualify that there isn't something different," the juror said.

Most of the prospective jurors said they had heard something about the crime. The differences in their answers came when they talked about whether they could believe a defense that Nichols was insane.

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•Juror No. 115 said he wanted to serve on the jury, but he didn't offer reasons.

The man, born in India, works at Equifax and knows the woman Nichols was accused of raping before he escaped from custody during his trial in 2005. Though juror No. 115 said he knows her only as one of many people at an occasional work meeting, he still would be inclined to believe her if she testified.

The juror said he didn't think "we accomplish anything" with a death sentence and "my honest answer at this point [is], I'm not in favor of life with parole."

The only sentencing option left is life without parole.

But he reassured prosecutors and defense attorneys that he could consider a life sentence with the possibility of parole and he could vote for capital punishment "if any danger would be caused by me not picking the death sentence."

Juror No. 115 was kept in the pool.

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• Juror No. 119 is a senior vice president at AT&T Mobility and responsible for 30,000 employees. She said she closely followed news reports the day of the shooting in case law-enforcement officials needed any wiretaps or cellphone signals tracked. She said she avoided news accounts, however, after she was summoned for the Nichols trial.

"It would be very hard for me to be objective," juror No. 119 said.

"People were killed that day. It would be hard for me to get past that. ... The evidence is very clear. The state has a very strong case."

She professed to be an "open listener" and she didn't proclaim a strong opinion on the death penalty. Except in this case.

"I will listen to it," juror No. 119 said. "But I have to be clear. I am very strong in my beliefs, and it would have to be significant [arguments] to dissuade me."

Juror No. 119 was excused.

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• Juror No. 103 might be one of the few people in Atlanta who has heard little about Nichols. What little she knew came from her husband the day of the shootings.

So she was stunned at the extent of the case when Bodiford read the 54-count indictment to prospective jurors.

"The only thing I knew is what my husband said when he called: Somebody just shot a judge and somebody else in the courtroom," she said.

"So what I heard yesterday surprised me."

The West End woman, a day-care worker and former nurse, said she has witnessed crime and suffered from it but doesn't watch TV news or read newspapers.

Juror No. 103 said she saw a man shot a few feet from her in the Bowen Homes housing project. Her nephew was shot to death when "he took up for his little brother" in Bankhead Courts. Her uncle was tried for murder in South Carolina.

But at the same time, her husband's uncle is a retired Atlanta police officer.

Juror No. 103 was kept in the pool.

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• Juror No. 138 was indicative of how proceedings can drag on even as lawyers claim they're trying to keep things moving.

Defense attorney Josh Moore approached the juror, a sales representative for Merck pharmaceuticals and a mother from Alpharetta, on Friday morning with a gambit he has used a lot in the past two weeks.

"We're in the home stretch, almost finished," he said enthusiastically.

"I just have a couple of questions."

That "couple" turned into 77 questions.

Moore probed the woman for 12 minutes about her life experiences — she had a brother who was robbed; and witnessed a person die from a stabbing — and how they shaped her attitudes toward police, justice and the death penalty.

The juror reassured him that she could keep an open mind and weigh only the evidence in the courtroom in determining Nichols' guilt or innocence and whether he gets life in prison or the death penalty.

She had given the same answer about 45 minutes earlier when prosecutor Clint Rucker asked: "Do you consider yourself an open-minded person?"

"Yes," she said. "Don't we all?"

"You'd be surprised," said Rucker, laughing.

Juror No. 138 was added to the jury pool.

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• Juror No. 108 made it clear: The Nichols trial is a waste of time.

"He is a mass murderer," the woman wrote on her jury questionnaire. "A lethal injection is far too humane for him. He should be shot in cold blood."

On the questionnaire she underlined the term "death penalty" twice.

With strong views, she wondered, why she was being asked whether she could be a fair juror. She noted she only sort of believed in the U.S. justice system.

She was further annoyed at having to report to court three days before she was questioned, and she did not try to hide her hostility.

Bodiford gently chastised the woman, who works for Fulton public schools, about her civic duty of jury service. Then he said he welcomed suggestions for making jury selection go faster.

"This may be disrespectful," the woman said, interrupting him. "But while these minutes are passing, you could be talking to someone else."

Juror No. 108 was excused.

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• Juror 105, a reporter with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote on his questionnaire that he was "disgusted" by the Nichols case, knew one victim (an AJC reporter whom Nichols is accused of assaulting in a parking garage) and had followed the case closely.

Despite all that, Prosecutor Rucker said, juror No. 105 was trained to analyze facts, and he could fairly decide Nichols' fate.

"He is a visible member of the community," Rucker said. "He would not come here and say he would do the right thing if he couldn't."

Lead defense attorney Henderson Hill was aghast.

"He works at the media outlet that has most covered this case for three and a half years," Hill said.

Bodiford said juror No. 105 may be a fair man but his inclusion in the pool was risky.

Juror No. 105 was excused.