DEL.ICIO.USUpdated: 4:21 p.m. November 19, 2008
Jury hears Nichols’ alleged threat against DA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Prosecutors, continuing Wednesday to hammer home to jurors their argument that convicted murderer Brian Nichols is a threat to escape from prison and cause more harm, playing a taped jailhouse telephone conversation in which Nichols appears to threaten the life of Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.
In the June 30, 2006, phone call from the Fulton County jail to a person prosecutors did not identify, Nichols says he is frustrated dealing with prosecutors from the Fulton County district attorney’s office.
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“If I could do something different, I would have stopped on the third floor and shot your ass,” Nichols says angrily on the tape of the call.
Prosecutors are trying to convince jurors to order Nichols be put to death. Prosecutors played the recording of the call while witness Rick Jacobs was on the stand testifying about security in the state’s prison system.
Prosecutor Clint Rucker asked Jacobs, who works in the Special Operations division of the State of Georgia, which oversees security in state prisons, if he knew whose office was on the third floor of the Fulton County Courthouse.
“Paul Howard’s,” said Jacobs.
Nichols was convicted on Nov. 7 of the murders of Judge Rowland Barnes and court reporter Julie Brandau, in Barnes’ courtroom in the Fulton County Courthouse, the murder of deputy Hoyt Teasley on the street outside, and the murder of U.S. Customs agent David Wilhelm that night in Buckhead.
Since the sentencing phase of the trial started last week, prosecutors have produced witness after witness to testify about Nichols manipulation of the system and apparent efforts to escape custody since his arrest for those murders.
On Tuesday, a guard at the DeKalb County jail testified about finding contraband in Nichols’ cell on the first day of jury selection in his trial last July. Among the items found in his cell were contraband paper clips witnesses have testified could be used to pick a lock on a pair of handcuffs.
A DeKalb County detention officer testified Wednesday morning about Nichols’ claim that he had taken an overdose of pills in the DeKalb County jail.
Jacobs testified that there have been incidents where inmates have escaped from a Georgia prison and were undetected by a daily head count at the prison. Prosecutor Rucker then asked Jacobs if he could say that “no matter what sentence he [Nichols] may receive from the jury…whether there is a 100 percent chance he will not escape?”
Jacobs said no, in his experience as a prison security expert “that with a 100 percent certainty, I could not guarantee that that would not happen.”
On cross examination, defense attorney Henderson Hill hammered at the “guarantee” quote, getting Jacobs to concede there are multiple layers of security in the prison system.
The DeKalb detention officer testified that on the evening of July 14, 2008, after Nichols returned to the jail from jury selection at Atlanta Municipal Court, Nichols called him from his cell intercom at the DeKalb jail and said, “I took fifty to one hundred pills. The clock is ticking. What you going to do?”
Officer Kenneth Byner told the jury he went to Nichols’ cell and found him lying on his back, apparently unconscious, with a towel on his head.
“I constantly asked him if he was OK,” said Byner. “But he didn’t respond.” He said a nurse checked out Nichols and found his vital signs were fine.
The detention officer said Nichols remained on the floor for about three hours, until a doctor and three of Nichols’ attorneys arrived.
On July 10, 2008, the first day of jury selection in Nichols’ trial, jailers searched Nichols cell and found loose tiles and paper clips hidden that could be used to pick the lock on handcuffs, other witnesses have testified.
Byner testified that after the doctor left Nichols’ cell that night, he saw Nichols — who had been unresponsive for hours — talking to his attorneys. The next day in court, during jury selection, Nichols appeared to be sick in the courtroom.
His lead attorney, Henderson Hill, told Superior Court Judge James Bodiford that Nichols was nauseated. A doctor testified that he would conduct blood tests to determine if Nichols had taken too much Tylenol. The doctor reported back, but not in open court.
On cross-examination by defense attorney Robert McGlassen, Byner was asked if he actually heard Nichols talking to his attorneys. Byner said he didn’t hear him, he just saw Nichols mouth moving: “He appeared to be talking,” said Byner.
McGlassen asked Byner if, before that, he had trouble with Nichols as an inmate. Byner said, no, Nichols was cooperative. On re-direct examination by prosecution attorney Kellie Hill, she asked the jailer: “Did you know Sgt. Grantley White said the same thing about him?”
The jailer said no, he didn’t know White said the same thing about Nichols.
White was the bailiff Nichols accosted at gunpoint in Barnes’ chambers on March 11, 2005, after Nichols had escaped a few minutes earlier from a holding cell in the courthouse. Nichols was to stand trial for rape later that morning in Barnes’ courtroom.
After tying up White and others in the the judge’s chambers, Nichols went into Barnes’ courtroom, where, the jury determined earlier this month, he shot and killed the judge and court reporter Julie Brandau. On the street outside, Nichols killed deputy Hoyt Teasley, jurors said, and, later that night in Buckhead, he killed U.S. Customs agent David Wilhelm.
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