Jamie Hood is an admitted cop killer.
He’s confessed during court hearings leading up to his trial, to the media, as he was being taken into custody. Yet, when his death penalty trial for the murder of Athens-Clarke County police officer Elmer “Buddy” Christian and Public Works Department employee Omari Wray starts on Monday, he will be pleading not guilty to the crimes listed in a 70-count indictment.
Hood, who is acting as his own attorney, hasn’t revealed what his defense will be as he tries to get himself acquitted.
Death penalty trials are complicated as a rule. The one for Hood has been even more so.
It’s the first time ever an accused murderer facing the death penalty has represented himself in a Georgia courtroom.
Hood fired every lawyer appointed to him when they insisted on questioning his sanity or using his upbringing as an explanation for why he became a criminal. In pretrial hearings, even before he started acting as his own attorney, Hood was combative and argumentative, talking over the judge and refusing to listen. At one point, he was removed from the courtroom for being disruptive and put in a jury room with a baby monitor so he could hear the proceedings. The judge also has ended court early because Hood refused to stop arguing.
While Hood has access to law books, legal experts question how effective he can be at questioning witnesses and arguing legal points. The real work starts even before he gets to that point, some say.
“The most important part of many capital cases is the selection of the jury,” said Stephen Bright, who teaches law at Yale University and is president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. “Many lawyers think the question of life and death is decided in the jury selection process.”
Hood will be alone when he sits at the defense table, though one of his fired attorneys will be nearby to answer his questions. Georgia law says defendants can have attorneys or they can represent themselves, but not both.
Hood has said he believes everyone in the justice system is working against him — the judge, the prosecutors, his own lawyers.
"I think he's paranoid," said University of Georgia law professor Russell Gabriel, who's followed the case, but has never met Hood. "He has a mental illness that prevents him from dealing rationally with his situation. He is quite convinced there is a large conspiracy out to get him."
The case will be tried in the courthouse in downtown Athens, just a few miles from where Christian was shot dead and another officer, Tony Howard, was wounded on March 22, 2011. He also will be tried for the killing of Wray three months earlier.
The jury will come from Elbert County because, before being fired, Hood’s lawyers argued successfully that a Clarke County jury could not be impartial because of extensive news coverage.
The crime
Hood comes from a family of criminals. Each of his six brothers has been to prison; one of them is now serving time for armed robbery.
Hood was 19 in 1999 when he went to prison the first time on an armed robbery conviction. While he was there, Hood’s 22-year-old brother, Timothy, was shot and killed by an Athens police officer, an event that he has said is the reason he fears law enforcement.
Hood had been out of prison 17 months when he allegedly fatally shot Wray, a 30-year-old employee of the Athens-Clarke County Public Works Department. Before the shooting, police said, Hood questioned Wray on the whereabouts of a drug dealer.
Police say one of Hood’s acquaintances, Jordan Brooks, told them that Hood had threatened Wray in internet posting, which made Hood a suspect in the December 2010 shooting. But he was not arrested at the time.
Then on March 22, 2011, police said, Hood called Brooks and asked him to come over; he said he wanted to show him something.
When Brooks arrived, Hood again asked for the whereabouts of the drug dealer, police said.
Brooks also refused to tell Hood where to find the dealer. So Hood and one of his brothers bound Brooks’ hands and feet with plastic Zip Ties and stuffed him into the trunk of a car.
While in the trunk of the Cadillac, Brooks freed his hands, and escaped when the car stopped at a light on a busy street.
Brooks reported the kidnapping, and police issued a lookout for Hood and his brother, who was driving.
Howard spotted the car they were in and pulled it over.
Hood is accused of shooting the officer in the face as he was getting out of his patrol car. Hood said he could hear his dead brother warning him to shoot the police officers before they shot him. Christian, who responded to back up Howard, also was shot. Christian died instantly.
Hood ran while his younger brother, Matthew, didn’t. The younger Hood, on probation possession cocaine with intent to distribute and for for multiple counts of entering an auto, was returned to prison for violating his probation by associating with a known felon. He is now in prison for a 2014 armed robbery conviction in Clayton County.
For four days after the officers were shot, federal, state and local law enforcement looked for Hood. Then Hood called the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to tell him he had hostages and that he would let them go unharmed under one condition: that his surrender was covered live on television.
First Hood first freed four hostages — a baby, a 3-year-old and two adults. Two and a half hours later, a shirtless Hood walked out of a north Athens apartment in line with the rest of the hostages — a teenage girl, a man and three women.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vernon Keenan said Hood admitted to killing Christian as he was taken into custody.
"'I'm sorry I killed that officer. He didn't deserve that,'" Keenan said Hood told him.
Hood continued to cast himself as a killer as the case moved toward trial. "I'm an assassin," Hood said during a 2012 hearing.
The district attorney and the public defender now advising Hood both declined to comment.
Pre-trial
During court hearings leading up to the trial, Hood as often said that news coverage of his trial is his only salvation because the judge, prosecutors and his former lawyers were plotting against him.
According to court records, a state expert evaluation found him to be competent.
But he is belligerent and insistent.
In March, Judge Patrick Haggard, ruled Hood could represent himself, but instructed defense attorneys to help Hood with legal issues.
“It does create a circus-like atmosphere in the courtroom,” John Marshall Law School professor Michael Mears said about defendants representing themselves. “Lawyers have to be trained … before they try these death penalty cases.”
Georgia law requires the defense team to be two lawyers with experience trying capital crimes. But the U.S. Supreme Court and the Georgia Supreme Court have ruled defendants competent to stand trial can defend themselves, something that is rare in capital cases.
“These people can be ill-equipped to represent themselves, but they have a constitutional right to try. They just don’t know how to go about it,” said University of Alabama law professor Joseph Colquitt, a retired judge and an expert on the death penalty. “He doesn’t get the benefit of any errors he made when he was his attorney.”
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