courtroom killing

So, anyone else getting height/weight/gender details on the other people who were over-powered by Nichols?

Officials did not say what measures were taken to beef up security, but said deputy Cynthia Hall was alone when she escorted Nichols to his retrial on rape and other charges Friday. Law requires that defendants not be handcuffed as they enter the courtroom to make sure the sight of cuffs doesn't unfairly influence the jury.

"Anytime security has been asked for, we have provided it," Fulton County Sheriff Myron Freeman told reporters Saturday.

Nichols, 33, is accused of overpowering a court deputy Friday, a grandmother in her 50s, taking her gun and fatally shooting three people including the judge in his rape case.

He is also a suspect in the shooting death Saturday of David Wilhelm, assistant special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI said.

Before his arrest last summer, Nichols was a computer technician for UPS, Hazen said. Nichols, an athlete who played football in college, liked to played basketball with friends, the attorney said.

"By all accounts, he was a likeable guy," said Hazen, who described Nichols as intelligent and articulate.

One of Nichols' college teammates had a differing opinion.

Nick Pergine, who played football with Nichols at Kutztown University, told The Associated Press that Nichols' physical stature and martial arts skills earned him a reputation.

"He was a bad dude," Pergine told the AP. "You didn't mess with him."

So, anyone else getting height/weight/gender details on the other people who were over-powered by Nichols?

What I'm reading/hearing tonight suggests it doesn't much matter what one individual was escorting Nichols. Unshackled, with only one escort, he was capable of quite a bit. Sure hope they rethink the policies on this sort of thing in that jurisdiction.

This is from today's New York Times article . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/national/13atlanta.html?th

Even with the capture of Mr. Nichols, questions persisted about why he was able to deprive not one, but two sheriff's deputies of their guns in the Fulton County Courthouse, especially after being caught earlier in the week with homemade knives in his shoes.

Sheriff Myron Freeman said he would appoint a task force to review safety procedures in the courthouse. The sheriff, who repeatedly reminded reporters that he had been in office for just two months, said he could not speak about the standard procedures for escorting prisoners in the courthouse and could not say what kind of holster had been issued to the deputy who had been escorting Mr. Nichols, Cynthia Hall.

Deputy Hall, 51, described as about 5 feet tall, was apparently alone with Mr. Nichols, a former college football player who is 6-foot-1 and weighs 210 pounds. She removed his handcuffs so he could change clothes before entering the courtroom.

As Mr. Nichols was dressing, he attacked Deputy Hall, leaving her in critical condition with a head wound and facial fractures, investigators said. She was still in critical condition today, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Department said.

The police say that Mr. Nichols went into the judge's chambers, where he overpowered a second deputy, handcuffing him and taking his gun. At the request of lawyers and Judge Rowland W. Barnes, security in the courtroom had already been increased after Mr. Nichols was caught with the homemade knives.

Richard L. Robbins, a lawyer who was in Judge Barnes's court at the time, said Mr. Nichols entered from behind the bench. "He had this look in his eyes where he was completely calm," Mr. Robbins said. "He looked like he was going to kill everybody and enjoy it. I heard a loud bang and I thought something fell over, and I saw the judge slump over and realized he had been shot. This guy was on his side, he never saw it coming. The way he looked, he was gone before he hit the floor. So the only consolation, if there is one, is I don't think he ever knew it happened."

The policy was wrong, not because a women was his escort but because she was alone.

Thanks for the link . . . it gives more detail than the other articles I have read.

Quote:

[..] The sheriff, who repeatedly reminded reporters that he had been in office for just two months, said he could not speak about the standard procedures for escorting prisoners in the courthouse [..]

The Sheriff didn't know the standard procedures for escorting [or supervising] prisoners . . . I guess two months wasn't long enough for him to learn one of the most vital components of his job. . . .

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday that a courthouse surveillance camera recorded Nichols' initial surprise attack on Deputy Cynthia Hall but that no one in the control center noticed the assault.

"It's not just horrible, it was preventable," Senior Superior Court Judge Philip Etheridge told the newspaper.

A video camera, which is supposed to be monitored by two guards in a command post, shows Nichols and the deputy arriving in the holding area between two courtrooms, according to a law enforcement official who saw the tape. The video shows Hall guiding Nichols, whose hands are still handcuffed behind his back, into one of two open cells.

Hall releases one cuff and turns Nichols around to unhook the remaining cuff. But the muscular, 33-year-old Nichols then lunges at Hall, knocking the petite, 51-year-old grandmother backward into another cell. Both disappear from camera view. Two to three minutes later, Nichols emerges from the cell, holding Hall's gun belt and police radio. He picks up her keys from the floor and locks her in the cell.

A few minutes later, he emerges in civilian clothes. He locks the door behind him and calmly walks out of the holding area, carrying the gun belt, according to the official who saw the tape.

Judge Etheridge said Hall should not have been alone with Nichols, a former college linebacker who had been found with two sharpened door hinges in his socks earlier in the week.

Hall remained in critical condition Sunday, Grady Memorial Hospital officials said. Killed were Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, court reporter Julie Brandau, Sgt. Hoyt Teasley and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent David Wilhelm.

No, the policy was wrong because it allowed the deputy to carry a gun. . . .

If Nichols had overpowered an unarmed deputy, the most he could have done is injure her and then escape. I agree that his escort should have been his physical equal; presumably, the only reason that the Atlanta authorities deemed it appropriate to put a woman in charge of this prisoner is because they thought any physical disparities between the two were negated by the fact that the deputy had a gun. In retrospect, this confidence in the efficacy of arming deputies was misplaced, but then, as I mentioned before, they shouldn't have been armed in the first place.