DEL.ICIO.USUpdated: 4:38 p.m. December 03, 2008
Nichols’ daughter found out who her dad was after killings
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Brian Nichols’ 16-year-old daughter took the witness stand Wednesday afternoon to testify for her father as he seeks to persuade a jury to spare his life. She was unable to identify him.
Jasmine Jay, an honor student from Allentown, Pa., began testifying in Fulton County Superior Court at midafternoon and said she “wasn’t happy about it” that her father had abandoned her. She said she learned to accept that fact after she learned that he committed four murders on March 11, 2005.
John Spink /jspink@ajc.com
With his defense attorneys, Brian Nichols (center) watches witness Lori James-Townes walk toward the stand Wednesday.
John Spink/jspink@ajc.com
Lori James-Townes testified Wednesday in Brian Nichols’ trial.
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On that date, she said: “My mother took me out of school and told me she had found my dad … and that he had shot four people.”
Defense lawyer Penelope Marshall asked how she felt when she got that information. “It was all really surreal, I felt shocked more than anything else,” Jasmine said.
Marshall asked Jasmine whether her father was in the courtroom. Jasmine looked at the defense table where Nichols and his other lawyers sat. “Is that him?” she asked.
Marshall hesitated: “Are you nervous?” she asked.
Jasmine, who spoke clearly, said she was nervous. She also said she has visited Nichols in jail.
Once, she said, she wrote her father but got no response.
Despite the horrific crime, she decided to get back in touch with Nichols. She said she made the commitment publicly on ABC TV’s “Good Morning America,” which contacted her the day of the killings.
“I viewed it as an opportunity to get back in touch with my father as well as his family despite everything that had happened … despite his shortcomings,” Jasmine said. “I feel a sense of completion … even under the circumstances.
“Even with all that he has done, I just want to have a relationship with my dad,” she said. “I would like to help save my father’s life.”
Nichols showed little expression, looking down during some of his daughter’s testimony and also looking away from her.
The Fulton County jury, which convicted Nichols of four murders and other crimes on Nov. 7, is now hearing testimony to decide whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison.
Her testimony followed contentious questioning between prosecutor Kellie Hill and an expert witness. Hill tried to make the expert, Lori James-Townes, a mitigation expert from Baltimore, acknowledge that Nichols — who has shown an ability to manipulate jail guards — might have gotten back in touch with Jasmine to use her testimony to manipulate the jury.
Hill suggested Nichols was exploiting his daughter because showing a father-daughter relationship might make the jury more empathetic. Until the killings, Hill said Nichols had not had a relationship with his daughter for more than a decade.
“After he killed four people, he is accepting of her as a daughter and not a day before,” Hill said.
James-Townes acknowledged Nichols hadn’t seen his daughter since she was 2 years old — and hadn’t provided financial or emotional support for her — despite making $80,000 a year as a UNIX system administrator for UPS. But James-Townes said she believed that the daughter might still need her father.
“I would agree he abandoned her,” James-Townes. “I don’t think he is exploiting Jasmine at all.”
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