DEL.ICIO.US‘The judge never saw’ Nichols
Barnes had been joking with lawyers when defendant came into courtroom
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday, September 29, 2008
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.
John Spink/jspink@ajc.com
Retired Fulton County Deputy Grantley White demonstrates Monday how accused killer Brian Nichols held a gun on him.
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Waller, who was in mid-sentence, 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’ head exploded, Waller said.
“I saw the judge’s head go out like confetti,” she 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 Courthouse shootings.
Nichols, whose rape trial was to resume that morning in Barnes’ courtroom, has pleaded not guilt 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 blacks.
Besides the two people in the courtroom, Nichols is also 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 and 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.
The two lawyers’ testimony came after Sgt. Grantley White, who has since retired from the sheriff’s office, told how Nichols had taken him and the rest of Barnes’ staff captive before the killings.
His voice wavering, his hands knotted in his lap, White led the jury through the chronology of events in which Nichols confronted the deputy at gunpoint in Barnes’ chambers.
White said Nichols took his gun, then his handcuffs and used them to bind White and the staff before going into the courtroom and shooting Barnes and Brandau and fleeing the courthouse.
Outside on the street, Nichols is accused of shooting to death Deputy Hoyt Teasley who had responded to a panic-button call from Barnes’ office. Later, in a robbery, Nichols murdered David Wilhelm, an off-duty U.S. Customs agent, who was working on his Buckhead house, prosecutors say.
White, who appeared burdened by guilt, told how he was returning with breakfast when Nichols surprised him with the gun of the deputy he had assaulted.
“He said, ‘Don’t do nothing Sarge. Don’t do nothing,’” White testified.
White said he responded: “What are you doing this for?”
He said Nichols replied: “‘Don’t do nothing Sarge. Don’t do nothing. I don’t have anything to lose.’”
Despite the warning, the gray-headed White said he made an swipe at the Beretta pistol Nichols was holding. The swipe missed.
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