BRIAN NICHOLS TRIAL: Death sentence or life in jail?

Brian Nichols didn’t begin being a bad man when he raped his girlfriend and later murdered four people —- including the judge presiding over his rape trial.

“He is someone who doesn’t believe the rules apply to him,” lead prosecutor Kellie Hill told jurors Wednesday. “He is someone who believes he can do whatever he wants, to whomever he wants and if he gets caught, he can talk his way out of it.”

Witnesses testified Wednesday in the penalty phase of Nichols’ trial about his brushes with the law, going back 16 years to his college days, including charges of fraud, burglary and marijuana. But more than a troubled history, prosecutors told jurors Nichols is committed to escaping and is willing to kill again.

“The evidence will show he will not stop trying to escape and he is willing to kill as many people as necessary to win his freedom,” Hill said. “He is someone who must be sentenced to death for the safety of our society.”

Prosecutors began calling witnesses to make the case that life imprisonment is too risky a sentence to give a convicted murderer with a track record of escape attempts. The defense plans to show evidence of Nichols’ background to show why the jury should spare Nichols’ life by imposing a life sentence in prison.

The jury on Friday rejected Nichols’ insanity defense and convicted him of the four murders, assaults and robberies associated with the March 11, 2005, Fulton County Courthouse shooting.

Fulton juries seldom impose death sentences in capital murder trials. In the Nichols case, the man who became the jury foreman told the court during jury selection he would be reluctant to impose the death penalty unless Nichols still posed a danger.

Hill told jurors they 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, Hill said, when paper clips fashioned as handcuff keys were found in his cell at the DeKalb County Jail. He was taken to that facility after his escape plots at the Fulton County Jail were uncovered.

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.

Nichols’ 26-hour crime spree began when he escaped from a courthouse cell before his rape trial was to resume. He beat his guard, leaving her brain-damaged, took her gun, 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 from the courthouse and, that night 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 look at Nichols’ crimes but also to look at his background and the man Nichols was before his life spiraled out of control after the breakup with his girlfriend.

Nichols, 36, was a middle-class, church-going man, earning $80,000 a year as an UNIX system administrator for UPS, when his life began to fall apart. His girlfriend ended their seven-year relationship after Nichols impregnated another woman.

The former girlfriend testified Nichols’ behavior became bizarre during their last months together. He eventually took her prisoner and raped her in August 2004. He spent seven months in the Fulton County Jail until he escaped after the courthouse shooting.

Henderson Hill told jurors that Nichols may have come from a hard-working family, in which the mother and father had pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. But he also was a neglected child who was sexually abused by a relative.

“You can’t start the clock in August 2004,” the lawyer said.

In his plea to spare Nichols, Hill reminded jurors 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.”