THE BRIAN NICHOLS CASE: NO DEATH PENALTY

Brian Nichols will at most spend the rest of his life in prison, spared a death sentence by hopelessly deadlocked Fulton County jurors who had convicted him for the March 11, 2005, courthouse shootings.

Judge James Bodiford said he would decide Saturday whether Nichols would get life or life with no possibility of parole.

The panel’s 9-3 vote split, with the majority in favor of Nichols dying by injection for killing four people in the rampage that terrorized Atlanta, shook Georgia’s judicial system, cost taxpayers millions of dollars and left the death penalty in doubt in Fulton County.

It was not known if the three holdouts included any of the three jurors who indicated before they were chosen for the case that they had misgivings about the death penalty. None of the jurors would talk publicly before leaving the courthouse.

Jurors wrestled with the punishment issue for three days, saying they were locked Thursday in the death-penalty impasse. Bodiford gave them two extra hours Friday night for a last-ditch effort to reach the unanimity Georgia law requires for a death sentence.

Nichols, who turned 37 on Wednesday, sagged in the shoulders as he heard of the continued deadlock that foreshadowed his escape from execution. Wearing a dark pin-striped suit and cobalt blue shirt, the former $80,000-a-year UNIX administrator for United Parcel Service sat expressionless, as he has for most of the 56 days of the trial, his only hint of nervousness an eye that blinked repeatedly.

His nemesis, District Attorney Paul Howard, sat grimly in the courtroom audience, sighed and stared stonily ahead as victims’ relatives wept quietly behind him. It was Howard who reportedly declined a year ago to let Nichols plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence without parole.

Howard declined to comment Friday night but said he’d talk Saturday about the possibility of seeking revision of Georgia law that requires a unanimous jury for a death penalty.

The jury’s verdict showed again how hard is to get a death penalty in Fulton County. Howard has sought the death penalty at least 10 times before juries, which so far have sentenced only two people to death: one in 2000 for the unprovoked killing of a police officer and the other last July for a triple murder, including a 3-year-old boy.

Georgia law requires death sentences to be proportional to penalties given for similar murders, according to Michael Mears, a professor at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, who defended death-penalty cases for years.

“If Brian Nichols does not receive the death penalty, how is the Georgia Supreme Court going to allow any other death penalty to stand that involves the murder of a police officer or court official?” Mears asked. “It is not the fault of the prosecutor. He is asking for the death penalty. He just can’t get the jury to agree with him.”

Howard’s prosecutors, who also refused any comment, had insisted that Nichols is still dangerous and a continuing threat to society. They said he had threatened to kill Howard in revenge, if given another chance, in a controversial audio tape of a jailhouse phone conversation between Nichols and his brother, Mark Nichols.

Admitting he killed four people, Nichols says on the tape that “I’d do it again” —- indicating a lack of remorse —- with the only difference being that he would shoot victims on the prosecutors’ floor of the courthouse the next time.

The jury sparked a flurry of courtroom drama on Thursday by asking to rehear that tape in its entirety. With defense lawyers calling it “highly prejudicial,” Bodiford said they could hear only the portion admitted into evidence during the trial itself, if they submitted the request to him in writing.

The request never came and the panel continued at an impasse beyond 30 hours.

When their foreman reported their plight Friday afternoon, defense lawyers told Bodiford he had a duty to declare the jury hung and impose a life sentence.

The immovable 9-3 split was not what the family and friends of Nichols’ victims wanted to hear.

Some bowed their heads and expressed disagreement. A few broke down completely.

Christina Greenway, daughter of slain court reporter Julie Ann Brandau, wiped tears with court-supplied tissues as her husband tried his best to comfort her.

Claudia Barnes, widow of Judge Rowland Barnes, stared stoically ahead —- as she has for the three-month trial. Barnes was the presiding judge at Nichols’ trial for raping a longtime girlfriend, the case that triggered his escape and rampage.

The jury of six black women, two white women, two black men, one white man and one Asian man convicted Nichols on Nov. 7 of killing Barnes, Brandau, sheriff’s deputy Hoyt Teasley and U.S. Customs agent David Wilhelm.

The jury heard 144 witnesses and considered more than 1,200 pieces of evidence. The cost to taxpayers for the defense alone is estimated to have cost well over $2 million —- perhaps more than $3 million —- although a final accounting won’t be known until all vouchers for lawyers, their staff and four expert witnesses are submitted.

One question that is unknown is whether Nichols will be turned over to federal authorities to serve his sentence at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo., because he is an escape risk and because he was convicted of killing a federal officer. At Florence, Nichols likely would be under 23-hour-a-day lockdown in a solitary cell with an hour granted for solitary exercise.

The jury’s decision means Nichols has some chance of redemption in prison, said the Rev. Kenneth Dean of Carrollton, who attended the trial for weeks. A semi-retired Baptist minister, Dean was long a force for civil rights in Mississippi and active in prison ministries.

“Some of the jurors may have taken a strict Christian stance in this,” he said. “Can you solve or cure a death with another death?”

Staff writers Rhonda Cook, Mark Davis and Moni Basu contributed to this article.

THE SENTENCING

> Under Georgia law, a death sentence can be carried out only after a unanimous decision by a jury.

> Because jurors in the Brian Nichols case could not reach a unanimous decision (the jury was split by a 9-3 vote) Nichols is expected to be sentenced to life in prison.

> That decision will come today, when the judge in the case, James Bodiford, formally sentences Nichols in the killing spree.

> It will be up to Bodiford to decide whether Nichols will ever be eligible for parole.

> Sentencing: For the latest on the case, log on to ajc.com 24 hours a day.