DEL.ICIO.USNichols: ‘There was nothing wrong … with me’
Defense team tries to withdraw from case; judge won’t let them
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, October 10, 2008
Brian Nichols’ own voice entered the courtroom again Friday — but this time it wasn’t a confession. It was a father-and-son chat.
Taped almost a year after the deaths of four people in the Fulton County Courthouse shootings, Nichols talked with his father by telephone from the Fulton County jail. He told his father that his lawyers were having him interviewed by a psychologist or psychiatrist.
Hyosub Shin / hshin@ajc.com
Brian Nichols confered with one of his attorneys, Henderson Hill, during Friday’s proceedings.
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“I think they think a black man must be crazy to stand up for himself,” Nichols told Gene Nichols. “I could have saved them some time and money and told them there was nothing wrong … with me.”
Nichols, who has since pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, has confessed to plotting the assassination of Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes and killing court reporter Julie Ann Brandau because he had declared war on the justice system, which he claimed was wrongly prosecuting him for rape.
Prosecutors hope the tape will help prove one part of Nichols’ remarks they agree with: that he was perfectly sane and not under paranoid delusions when he killed Barnes, Brandau, Deputy Sgt. Hoyt Teasley and Brian Wilhelm, a U.S. Customs agent on March 11, 2005.
The sheriff’s office tapes but doesn’t monitor calls by jail inmates.
The call that Nichols made to his father from jail captures a son learning details of his father’s childhood and a recount of Nichols’ own raising — with far less discipline than his dad experienced.
His dad notes that defense lawyers seem to be plotting a defense based partly on the idea that Nichols was abused as a child, which sparked laughter between the two.
“I don’t think I abused you,” Gene Nichols said, laughing. “I might have whipped your butt once or twice. I think I whipped you one time.”
“It might have been a little more than once,” his son said.
“I don’t remember having a lot of trouble with you really,” the father said; “I got you out of trouble a couple times in school and I didn’t punish you for that. Remember that time at the military school… ? You took something you weren’t supposed to take. I had to straighten that out.”
Nichols asks about his father’s life growing up and seems surprised to learn that he was in the Marines for four years and was the son of sharecropper who moved between South Carolina farms and Baltimore jobs for work.
His son asks whether he suffered during Segregation. His father tells him that his high school in Baltimore was the last to integrate and about the conflicts with working-class whites who rioted against biracial schools.
Gene Nichols showed no emotion as he listened.
As the talk neared the end of the 20-minute jail limit on phone calls, his father asked whether there is anything else his son wants to tell him.
No, his son said. After telling Brian that his brother will probably visit the next day, he says: “I’ll tell your momma you called.”
“Well, I’ll be here tomorrow, unless I can make other arrangements,” his son said.
They both laugh and his father then adds, perhaps half jokingly, “Stay in tonight, don’t go nowhere.”
The prosecution had expected to rest today after introducing letters Nichols wrote to a Connecticut woman who was implicated in helping Nichols with an escape plot but began cooperating with authorities. The prosecution was delayed in resting, however, because of a defense move to withdraw from the case.
Defense lawyer Robert McGlasson argued the defense could no longer effectively represent Nichols because defense lawyer Jacob Sussman has been accused of wrongdoing by the Connecticut woman, Lisa Meneguzzo. A former defense paralegal is also implicated in the reputed Meneguzzo-Nichols plot, McGlasson said.
Superior Court Judge James Bodiford, who had given defense lawyers a chance to withdraw before trial, told them it was too late to quit.
“You can’t come up three weeks later, right as the state is ready to rest, and say, ‘Now we want to withdraw,’” Bodiford said. “You can’t quit the trial at this point.”
Meneguzzo became interested in Nichols after the courthouse shooting made national headlines. Prosecutors now expect to introduce the letters between the two of them on Monday.
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