The taxi driver was in a foul mood. He had no time to be in court for Brian Nichols.

“Every day I’m losing money,” he complained.

Enlarge this image

John Spink/AJC

Superior Court Judge James Bodiford has a reputation for being testy. But he also has a reputation for being fair.

Recent headlines:

• 61-year-old man arrested in meth bust 
• Lenox Square adds 6 new stores, Italian restaurant 
• DeKalb hires ex-Atlanta mayoral spokesman for high-ranking job 

   • Atlanta and Fulton County news

Superior Court Judge James Bodiford was having none of it. The snowy-haired judge, famous for his temper, zeroed in on the cabbie. “You think jury service is a civic duty for everybody but you?”

Bodiford told him he was a bad citizen — the worst seen during jury selection — before dismissing him.

“He’s got a terrible attitude,” Bodiford said to the lawyers. “He would be a terrible juror.”

Marietta lawyer Gary “Bats” Pelphrey said later the cabbie got a dose of classic Bodiford. “He is prone to lecture,” Pelphrey said.

Bodiford also has a reputation for moving cases — exactly what many people believed the Nichols’ death-penalty trial needed. Nichols, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, is charged with murdering four people in March 2005, including a judge at the Fulton County Courthouse.

Jury selection was supposed to start in January 2007, but it hit repeated delays when the previous judge got into a showdown with state and county officials over funding for the defense team. Bodiford was appointed in February and pledged to get the case moving to restore public confidence.

This round of jury selection, which began July 10, was predicted to last two months. Instead, the pool of 90 jurors was qualified Friday. From that pool, lawyers will pick the jury for the trial, which is expected to begin Sept. 22.

Tom West, a capital defense lawyer, said the judge has apparently won a measure of confidence from the Nichols team or it wouldn’t have agreed to reduce the jury pool from 100 to 90.

“You don’t do that if you think the judge is jamming things down your throat,” West said. “Judge Bodiford has been very keen on pushing this case forward expeditiously. That has been his stated goal from the beginning, and he has been successful.”

The defense, led by Charlotte-based lawyer Henderson Hill, has attacked the six-day-a-week schedule. Lawyers had to work late to prepare for the next day’s slate of jurors, and exhaustion was undermining their ability to represent their client, said Hill, who indicated the schedule could be an issue on appeal.

James Bonner, who heads up appeals for the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, said rush-to-judgment issues are common in “below-the-radar cases” but rarely are grounds for appeal in high-profile cases like the Nichols trial.

Bodiford cut his teeth on high-profile cases in 1997 when he presided over the trial of Fred Tokars, a lawyer convicted of having his wife murdered in front of their two children in Cobb County in 1992.

Then-District Attorney

Tom Charron sought the death penalty against Tokars, who had four top lawyers.

Bodiford, 59, passed the bar in 1979 and spent nearly his entire legal career as a judge. After a short stint as a prosecutor for Charron — following a shorter stint in private practice — he was appointed chief magistrate for Cobb County in 1985.

He was elected to the Superior Court in 1994, during which he suffered his first, and perhaps his only, negative media attention. He was caught pulling up his opponent’s campaign signs.

At the time, Bodiford called the crime a “childish” thing to do.

Nichols, however, may be lucky to be Bodiford’s third high-profile capital case: Tokars avoided the death penalty, as did Lynn Turner, a former 911 operator convicted last year in Bodiford’s court of murdering a Forsyth County firefighter.

“If I had a personal case, I would like him to be the judge,” said Michael Saul, a Marietta lawyer. “I’ve had good results in my jury trials with him, and in a nonjury trial, I got a good result. He bends over backward to be fair, so what more can you ask for?”

The judge may have a reputation for being testy and efficient. But he also has one for being even-handed.