BRIAN NICHOLS TRIAL: VIVID MEMORIES OF PAINFUL LOSSES

The image Claudia Barnes drew with words as she testified Thursday was as vivid and unsettling as anything said or shown to jurors over the nine weeks of Brian Nichols’ murder trial.

She described a loss —- a loss that she physically touched.

She told how she went to the body of her husband, Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, and held his hand for the last time before he was cremated. She traced her fingers “close to his temple where the bullet entered and exited.” She touched the beard she had kept well-trimmed.

“I needed to see for myself that he was actually dead and this was not a dream,” she said.

Claudia Barnes, who has attended the trial religiously and stoically, held her composure as she read her statement. Her tears didn’t come until she left the stand and watched as 12 others read their own statements about their loved ones —- all victims of Nichols’ March 11, 2005, shooting rampage that began after he escaped from custody while awaiting trial that morning in Judge Barnes’ Fulton County courtroom.

Claudia Barnes dabbed at red-rimmed eyes as they spoke. They were the children of Judge Barnes. They were the children and family of court reporter Julie Ann Brandau, shot in Barnes’ courtroom seconds after Nichols gunned down the judge.

They were the mother and wife and children of Deputy Hoyt Teasley, shot on the street outside the courthouse. They were the wife and sister and friends of U.S. Customs agent David Wilhelm, shot dead by Nichols later that night in Buckhead.

Their statements were addressed to the jury in the penalty phase of the trial as the jury decides whether to sentence Nichols, who was convicted Nov. 7 of the four murders, to death or life in prison.

The victims read their statements as calmly as they could. They were written without accusing Nichols of anything, without recommending life or death, because that’s what state law demands: great loss, articulated with little emotion.

Judge Barnes’ daughter, Kiley, nearly cracked, her voice trembling as she told the jury: “I feel as heartbroken and lonely as I did on March 11, 2005, and I just feel sick.”

Fellow court reporter Evelyn Parker said she wept for four months after the murder of her friend, Brandau. “The tragic death of Julie tore me out of my frame,” she said.

“Something so wrong, wrong and vile. I wear this sorrow like a wet wool coat weighing heavily on me.”

Teasley’s wife, Deborah, said she had lost her soulmate, the man she could not replace, who brought her great joy and relieved her of her greatest burdens.

“I keep a lot of my emotions bottled up now,” she said. “Who am I supposed to turn to now?” The images of that morning haunt her. “I hate to think he was dying out there on the street,” she said. “But the truth is he was.”

Wilhelm’s widow, Candee, said her life was “ripped in two” by his death. She described him as “the guy next door, the guy every girl hopes they’ll marry.” Her husband, she said, “was the heart and soul that made life better … and that is what I have lost.”

Before the survivors of the victims testified Thursday, lawyers argued while the jury was out of the room. The defense moved for a mistrial because of a taped telephone call played by the prosecution for the jury Wednesday.

In the June 30, 2006, call from the Fulton County jail, Nichols talked to his brother, Mark, about his frustrations with the prosecution. He made what sounded like a death threat to Paul Howard, Fulton County’s district attorney.

Defense attorney Robert McGlasson filed a motion for mistrial because the prosecution had not given the defense a transcript of the telephone call, as the court has ordered in the case.

He said the telephone call was a “bombshell” and a “smoking pistol” that had irreparably damaged the defense’s case.

Superior Court Judge James Bodiford ruled that the prosecution did violate the court order, but not intentionally. It was evidence he would have allowed the jury to hear in any case, he said, and denied the motion for mistrial.

By afternoon, the case of State of Georgia v. Brian Gene Nichols turned to the grief of Claudia Barnes and others.

“Some days I have no energy and I have to force myself to go through the motions of work and play,” she said. “Going home to the void is sometimes overwhelming, and I feel hopeless.”