NICHOLS TRIAL: First witness to deaths testifies

Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes never knew he was about to die.

Nicole Waller, a young lawyer, was appearing before Barnes that morning to ask him to dismiss a business lawsuit, when she saw a well-dressed man enter the courtroom from the judge’s chambers.

Waller, who was in midsentence, assumed the man was a staffer as he strode up behind the judge with his right hand extended.

“It looked to me like he was handing something to the judge,” Waller testified Monday. “The judge never saw him.”

Barnes had just indulged in his trademark humor at the good-natured expense of one of the attorneys.

The newcomer, later identified as Brian Nichols, stepped up on the judge’s bench.

Nichols then fired, and Barnes was fatally wounded, Waller said.

Then Nichols aimed at the court reporter, Julie Ann Brandau, and fired again, hitting her in the head, Waller said.

Waller, the 18th witness to testify in Nichols’ murder trial in Superior Court, was the first one who witnessed the deaths of Barnes and Brandau on March 11, 2005, in the Fulton County Courthouse shootings.

Nichols, whose rape trial was to resume that morning in Barnes’ courtroom, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Nichols is accused of overpowering his guard on the way to court by beating her so badly that he partly blinded her right eye and severely damaged her brain.

He reputedly took her gun to seek revenge on the criminal justice system that his lawyers say he viewed as oppressive to African-Americans.

In addition to two people in the courtroom, Nichols is accused of killing two lawmen to further his escape.

Richard Robbins, the attorney who was opposing Waller, testified that Barnes had just needled him about his legal arguments after Waller cited one of Robbins’ previous positions to make her case.

“Judge Barnes, who had been looking pretty bored at this time … winked at me,” Robbins said. “I knew he was teasing me.”

“Julie was smiling at me, and the judge was smiling. I looked at the clock, and I heard an extremely loud sound. I thought maybe an easel had fallen.”

Robbins looked up at the bench where he saw Barnes, obviously dead, still sitting before slowly slumping to the floor.

Waller took refuge under the podium from where she had been speaking.

Both Robbins and Waller said they focused on Nichols.

“He pointed the gun at my chest, and he looked directly into my eyes,” Robbins testified. “I thought, ‘He killed the judge, now he is going to kill the prosecutor and then he is going to kill everybody else, and I am sitting at the prosecutor’s table.’ “

Robbins turned and fled to the courthouse hallway and to another judge’s chambers for refuge. Nichols scanned the courtroom, then fled into the same hallway, Waller said.

“He was perhaps the calmest, most chilling sight I have ever seen,” Robbins said of Nichols. “He looked like a law clerk, but he had a gun.”

Waller said she and her co-counsel and client fled into Barnes’ chambers where they found the judge’s staff handcuffed.

To get to safety, the lawyer said she clambered over the judge’s bench, stepping over his body.

The white-bearded judge wore blue jeans under his robe.

“To give you an idea how fast this happened, by the time I stepped over the judge, I remember seeing the first blood beginning to trickle out of his head,” Waller said.

During the testimony, Nichols, a man witnesses have described as handsome, intelligent and personable, sat gazing downward, his chin resting on the knot of his tie.

Nichols is accused of fatally shooting outside on the street Deputy Hoyt Teasley, who had responded to a panic-button call from Barnes’ office.

Later, in a robbery, Nichols is accused of killing David Wilhelm, an off-duty U.S. Customs agent, who was working on his Buckhead house, prosecutors say.

Witness Lynette Davis, the judge’s staff attorney who was in the courtroom that day, said she heard the gunfire but didn’t know what happened until Brandau fell. At first, she said, she thought the judge’s Tasmanian devil coffee mug had fallen.

In the courtroom audience, the mention of the mug brought a smile to Claudia Barnes, the wife of the judge.

Then a prosecutor again played the court reporter’s audiotape of the two gunshots and Davis’ long-lasting shrieks.

For three minutes, the jurors listened to Davis screaming and crying on the tape.

The prosecutor then turned it off, leaving Davis on the stand, sobbing, to be questioned by defense lawyer Henderson Hill.

Instead, Superior Court Judge James Bodiford called for a 20-minute recess. Davis left the courtroom and wept as she walked with a friend down the corridor. She returned after the break.

Hill had no questions.