DEL.ICIO.USPsychologist: Nichols had ‘delusional disorder’
Defense witness says part of defendant’s brain didn’t know right from wrong
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
A defense psychologist sought Tuesday morning to map out the mind of Brian Nichols, telling jurors the accused killer didn’t know right from wrong in one part of his mind on March 11, 2005, when he is accused of shooting and killing four people. In another part of his mind, the psychologist says, Brian Nichols knew the killings were “illegal under Georgia law.”
It was the second day on the stand for clinical and forensic psychologist Mark Cunningham, who is testifying to the heart of Nichols’ defense, that Nichols is innocent by reason of insanity and was delusional when Judge Rowland Barnes, court reporter Julie Ann Brandau, deputy Hoyt Teasley, and U.S. Customs agent David Wilhelm were shot and killed.
John Spink/jspink@ajc.com
Brian Nichols listens to testimony Tuesday during his murder trial.
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
RELATED LINKS
The psychologist said Nichols was suffering at the time from a “delusional disorder, with persecutorial and grandiose themes” that made him believe he was fighting for a greater cause. That delusional disorder, Cunningham said, was “encapsulated” in his brain, like a tumor that didn’t spread to the rest of his mind.
As a result — even though witnesses have testified in his four-week-long trial that Nichols appeared to think and act intelligently and methodically as he plotted out the moves of his escape and rampage — he could still be “crazy,” Cunningham testified.
“As he is effectively moving from one carjacking to the next, he’s not going to be thinking weird,” said Cunningham, who based his diagnosis on interviews with Nichols, and others, and reviews of Nichol’s writings. “The rest of his mind is working fine as it propels him along the path of his delusional behavior.”
For the second time in the trial, jurors listened to a witness read from Nichols’ writings. Earlier, the prosecution produced writings found in the holding cell from which he escaped after beating deputy Cynthia Hall nearly to death.
Cunningham read from a college paper Nichols wrote, entitled “Deep Thoughts,” in which he articulated his belief in a conspiracy against Black Americans in this country that is being “carried out in a systematic way.” Cunningham said those beliefs “are the seeds of what later grew into a delusional disorder.”
In the paper, which Nichols wrote while a student from 1992 to 1993 at Newberry College in Newberry, S.C., he talks about the legitimacy of an armed revolt against racism in this country, arguing that if violence is right in Vietnam and the Middle East “surely it can be used in South Central Los Angeles.”
“It seems funny that the government wants you to fight in Iraq,” he wrote, “and the Iraqis have never called me a ‘Nigger.’ But I see the word scribbled on the bathroom door every morning I use it, and have heard the word used several different occasions since I’ve been in Newberry.”
In the paper he calls slain civil rights leader Malcolm X his “idol” and a “hero to me because he stood up like a man and fought so strongly for his beliefs.” Malcolm X was assassinated while speaking at a political rally in New York City in 1965.
Cunningham testified that the “extreme political beliefs” Nichols articulated in his college paper began evolving into delusions when his long-time girlfriend broke up with him in the summer of 2004 and his fragile psyche “cracked.” He was accused of raping the girlfriend in August of 2004.
It was while standing trial for that rape that Nichols is accused of escaping and going on a killing spree. He was in custody in the Fulton County jail for about eight months awaiting trail. Witnesses have testified that conditions were so bad in the jail that the added stress contributed to Nichols’ mental deterioration.
The psychologist told jurors that when Nichols turned violent and killed people, it wasn’t “thug” behavior. “This is very different from an anti-social attitude,” he said, “because he is taking into consideration” a greater cause.
Nichols said in a three-hour videotaped confession he gave police when he was captured the day after the killing spree that the greater cause was a slave revolt he was trying to start against Fulton County, the state of Georgia, and the U.S. government.
Services »
