Jury in Atlanta courthouse shooting case unable to reach sentencing verdict
ATLANTA — Jurors say they cannot reach a unanimous sentencing decision in the case of a man who killed a judge and three other people in a shooting rampage that started in a downtown Atlanta courthouse.
The judge told the jurors Thursday to continue deliberating.
The jury has already deliberated for almost 20 hours.
Prosecutors have asked the jury to sentence Brian Nichols to death.
If the jury cannot reach a unanimous decision, Georgia law requires the judge to decide whether to sentence the 37-year-old to life in prison with parole eligibility or life in prison without parole.
Nichols was convicted last month of murder and dozens of other counts in the 2005 killings.
Nichols was on trial for rape when he grabbed a guard's gun and committed the killings.
posted by Richard at
Thursday, December 11, 2008
2 Comments:
The jury was split 9/3 for the death penalty! Nichols was found guilty of killing four people, and savagely beating a female guard who is now disfigured and mentally incapacitated.
He was tried in State Court, Fulton County, and since the jury was deadlocked on the sentencing, the Judge could only rule with a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole, which the Judge did on Friday.
Nichols is 38 years old, so the good citizens of Georgia will be responsible for absorbing the $3 million plus for his trial, plus another $800 thousand for his lifetime incarceration.
WTF is required to convict a murderer in Georgia and sentence him/her to the death penalty for their crime(s)? What possible good could come from having a person like this interact with other people over the next 35+ years in State prison?
Would any one of the three jurors question their decision if they had to spend a few days in his cell? You bet your ass they would !!
The jury selection process took several weeks. The lead prosecutor would not accept a pretrial guilty plea with life imprisonment sentence for Nichols.
The prosecutor wanted the death penalty. The jury members all asserted during the jury selection process that they could support the death penalty, yet three obviously would not.
The three were asked by fellow jury members what it would take for them to sentence Nichols to death..."instead of the four he killed, which you acknowledge, suppose it was 50 people?"...they said "it wouldn't matter".
Were these three jurors black? Was there an element of "OJ justice" involved? Was the prosecution effort botched?
The only plausible explanation is these three people lied, in spite of the oath they took as jurors.
I second the notion they should be required to spend a day a month in the cell with Nichols, so they could learn firsthand what kind of a fellow he is, and revisit their decision for at least a year.
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