Taped shooting played for Nichols jury

Just seven minutes into the prosecutor’s opening statement at the Brian Nichols murder trial Monday, two gunshots rang out on a tape recording.

The sounds brought jurors chillingly back to the Fulton County courtroom in March 2005 where he is accused of murdering a judge and a court reporter.

The two shots, four seconds apart, killed Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes and his court reporter, Julie Ann Brandau, as Barnes was hearing a civil action shortly before Nichols’ rape trial was to resume in the same courtroom that morning.

The gunfire was followed by screams.

“DON’T HURT ME… DON’T HURT ME,” a breathless woman shrieked. “HELP… DON’T HURT ME.”

The screams of Lynette Davis, Barnes’ staff attorney, came as Brandau fell across her, fatally shot through the head.

As the tape played, Brandau’s daughter, Christina Scholte, wept into her hands.

Nichols’ father, Gene Nichols, abruptly left the courtroom as the tape played. His wife and Nichols’ mother, Claritha, cried.

Kiley Barnes, the judge’s daughter, buried her face in her hands. So did Deborah Teasley, widow of Fulton County sheriff’s deputy Sgt. Hoyt Teasley.

Brian Nichols, 36, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, was stoic and stared, unflinching, straight ahead. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

Nichols’ lawyer told the jurors they would soon see how he was “swallowed whole by his delusions.”

Ambush described

The sounds and images set the tone of the prosecution’s case. Lead prosecution attorney Kellie Hill described the defendant as having a “cold-blooded, conniving, evil and an extremely, extremely dangerous mind.”

She said Nichols ambushed Barnes from behind.

Lead defense attorney Henderson Hill (no relation to the prosecutor) didn’t deny the brutality of the crime.

He sought to defuse it, describing Nichols as a man beset by delusions of racial conflict in which he thought his attack was a blow for justice. He said Nichols even spared the lives of some of his victims.

Hill, of Charlotte, acknowledged that description might not at first seem to match the defendant he described as “handsome,” who sat calmly at the defense table in a brown wool suit, white shirt and patterned tie.

He told jurors their challenge “will be to figure out what was it that caused a broken psyche to come completely unhinged.”

Prosecutor Hill said Nichols, far from delusional, was methodical and plotted his every move that day.

She described how he savagely beat his guard, sheriff’s Deputy Cynthia Hill, then made his way to the chambers of Barnes. There he tied up Barnes’ staff and relieved the bailiff, Sgt. Grantley White, of his gun.

“Sarge, I got nothing to lose,” Nichols explained when White asked him what he was doing.

After the shootings, the prosecutor said Nichols didn’t flee the courtroom immediately, but went to a room where witnesses in his rape case waited to testify.

“He looked into that room but luckily … the victim in the rape case was late,” the prosecutor said.

When he reached the street below, Nichols fired into the air to create pandemonium, she continued. But Nichols didn’t flee. He waited.

“When people started running, he didn’t,” she said. “Instead he turned around and pointed those guns and when Sgt. Teasley came out that door, he [Nichols] fired four times. He ambushed him.”

The prosecutor went over what she described as Nichols’ deliberate steps to mislead police by committing several carjackings —- then hiding the last car in a parking garage —- before walking to Five Points and catching a MARTA train to Buckhead.

It was that flight that led him to David Wilhelm, an off-duty federal agent, who was doing tile work at a house he owned and was renovating in Buckhead, Hill said.

Nichols shot Wilhelm, paralyzing him, and then picked his pockets and stole his truck as he lay dying, the prosecutor said.

Juror replaced

Before the tape was played, Superior Court Judge James Bodiford replaced Juror No. 17, who asked to be excused for “emotional,” “mental” and “dental” reasons.

The tooth excuse was not explained.

Bodiford admonished the 30-something white man about shirking his civic duty —- and quickly let him know why he would still feel the pain of jury duty but would do so solo.

“It is sort of like being out in the battlefield and deserting —- you leave everybody else to do the work,” Bodiford said. “You are a shadow juror. You still have the same rules… . You have to wear your juror badge every day.”

The no-nonsense judge put the man in the judicial equivalent of high school detention.

Bodiford ordered him to attend the Nichols trial —- which is expected to last until Christmas —- and sit in the audience without participating in deciding Nichols’ fate.

“There is no such thing as quitting the case,” Bodiford said.