DEL.ICIO.USProsecution: Nichols will always be dangerous
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The prosecution told jurors Wednesday that Brian Nichols will never stop plotting to escape, he will always be dangerous and that they need to neutralize him by sentencing him to death.
Prosecutors began calling witnesses during the penalty phase of Nichols’ death-penalty trial in Superior Court, aiming to make the case that life imprisonment is too risky a sentence to give a multiple killer with a track record of escape attempts.
Kimberly Smith/ksmith@ajc.com
Lead prosecutor Kellie Hill talks to jurors Wednesday during Brian Nichols’ trial.
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Lead prosecutor Kellie Hill said jurors only have to read Nichols’ own words in letters to fellow plotters to realize that the risk of escape is real. Nichols’ last known plot was at the beginning of jury selection for this trial, when paperclips fashioned as handcuff keys were found in his cell at the DeKalb County jail, where he was housed after his escape plots were uncovered at the Fulton County jail, Hill said.
Also found in the cell were sharp pieces of broken tile that could be used as a weapon, Hill said.
“His plots to escape are not fantasy — he is able to manipulate people inside and outside the jail,” Hill said. “He is still planning. He is still dangerous… He is someone who must be sentenced to death for the safety of our society.”
Hill read from one of Nichols’ letters to a Fulton County jail inmate where he talked about how he had bribed a guard and gave advice on how to overpower guards for their escape. The guard in question was later fired.
“What better way to get a glimpse in to a mind of a cold-blooded killer than to look at his own words”, Hill said.
On Friday, the jury rejected Nichols’ insanity defense and found him guilty of 54 crimes, including four murders, on March 11, 2005. Now the jury must decide whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison.
Fulton County juries seldom impose death sentences in capital-murder trials. In the Nichols case, the man who became the jury foreman said he would be reluctant to impose the death penalty unless he was convinced the defendant still posed a danger.
Prosecutors plan a lengthy penalty phase to give the foreman and the other 11 jurors with the evidence — including much testimony to show Nichols remains a threat — to give the ultimate punishment.
“The evidence will show that his past actions have earned a sentence of death, his current actions deserve a sentence of death and his future dangerousness requires a sentence of death,” Hill told jurors Wednesday before the testimony began in the penalty phase.
Nichols’ 26-hour crime spree, known at the Fulton Courthouse shootings, began when he escaped from a holding cell before his rape trial was to resume. He beat his guard, leaving her brain-damaged, took her gun and went to the courtroom and murdered the judge who was presiding over his rape trial and the court reporter. He murdered a sheriff’s deputy who pursued him when he fled the courthouse and, that night, he murdered an off-duty federal agent during a robbery. He claimed a delusional compulsion that he was leading a “slave rebellion” against an unjust justice system caused him to commit the crimes.
Lead defense lawyer Henderson Hill (no relationship to the prosecutor) told jurors not to simply look at Nichols’ crimes but also to look at his background and the man Nichols was before the rape of his longtime girlfriend in August 2004 and the courthouse shooting.
Nichols, 36, had been a successful, middle-class, church-going man, earning $80,000 a year as an UNIX system administrator for UPS. His life began to fall apart when Nichols impregnated another woman, causing his girlfriend of seven years to end their relationship.
Henderson Hill attacked the prosecutor’s plea to jurors that they focus on who Nichols is today. The defense lawyer asked jurors to also focus on Nichols’ past — including the sexual abuse Nichols claimed to suffer as a child.
“YES, YES, YES, it is a question of who he was before,” Hill said. “You can’t start the clock in August 2004.”
The defense lawyer urged jurors not to put too much credibility in Nichols’ letters, suggesting that they were still the product of a diseased mind — regardless of whether jurors thought he was insane.
In his plea to spare Nichols, Hill reminded jurors that his client had a bleak future, regardless of whether they selected death by lethal injection, life without parole, or life with the possibility of parole.
“Are we in a situation where we throw up our hands and say the only way the community can protect itself is to kill Brian Gene Nichols?” he asked. “Accountability is not a question. He will be held accountable in the most severe way. Only the most severe punishments are available.”
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