Fatal courthouse shooting and violent spree still reverberate 10 years later
A fatal shooting and assault rampage that began at a Georgia courthouse 10 years ago, resulting in the deaths of a judge, a court reporter and two law enforcement officers, led to enhanced security measures at courthouses throughout the state.
However, as the Fulton County Courthouse community on Wednesday remembered the slain victims and observed a moment of silence, some also questioned whether more still should be done to improve court security, according to the Daily Report (sub. req.), My Fox Atlanta and WABE.
The 26-hour crime spree began the morning of March 11, 2005, when rape suspect Brian Nichols overpowered and brutally beat a 51-year-old sheriff’s deputy taking him to the courthouse for trial. The 33-year-old former college football player stole her semi-automatic pistol, ammunition and a police radio, MSNBC reported in 2005. Then, instead of simply fleeing, he went to the chambers of Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, who had been presiding over his case.
After overpowering a second deputy and seizing a second gun in the judge’s chambers, Nichols entered Barnes’ courtroom and fatally shot both the judge and court reporter Julie Ann Brandau. Nichols’ former girlfriend, who was to testify against him, and the prosecutor in the case hadn’t yet arrived.
Attorney Richard Robbins of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan was in the courtroom that morning to argue a civil motion. However, he was sitting at a table used by the female prosecutor during Nichols’ trial. Hearing a loud crashing noise, Robbins glanced up and saw the judge falling from his chair, obviously dead. Nichols was pointing a gun toward Robbins, looking straight into his eyes. “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,’” testified Robbins at Nichols’ murder trial in 2008.
There was no place to take cover, and Robbins sprinted from the courtroom, followed by Nichols and a sheriff’s deputy, who was to be slain by Nichols minutes later, the Daily Report (sub. req.) recounted in an article last month. Robbins’ opposing counsel, their client and a staff attorney for the judge were still in the courtroom uninjured.
Nichols and the deputy went one way and Robbins went another, running across a skywalk that connected the courthouse to judges’ chambers. He broke his hand as he smashed through a glass door to gain entry and hole up there, after no one answered when he tried to use an internal phone line to call for help. His knees were shaking, Robbins said, when he went back to the scene of the courtroom carnage hours later to get his litigation bag, keys and cellphone before returning to work.
Meanwhile, as Nichols fled the building, he fatally shot the courthouse deputy pursuing him, then carjacked several vehicles, murdered an off-duty federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and pistol-whipped two people as the bloody day proceeded, MSNBC reported. He was captured by a SWAT team after entering a stranger’s home and taking a woman hostage. She eventually talked her way out and called authorities.
In the aftermath of the rampage, a courthouse security committee headed by Judge T. Jackson Bedford recommended a number of safety enhancements and the upgraded security at the courthouse served as a model for facilities throughout Georgia, WABE reports.
But, following courthouse budget cuts, the facility actually has fewer security officers today than it did in 2005, the Daily Report found.
“My personal opinion is somewhat controversial, but I don’t think there should be guns in the courtroom. Period. End of sentence,” Bedford told WABE. “But I am totally in the minority on that position.”
Today, Robbins is at the helm of his own firm, having given up his position as a partner at Sutherland Asbill to establish Robbins Ross Alloy Belinfante Littlefield. Although he suffered from significant post-traumatic stress reactions after the shootings that made loud noises and court appearances stressful for him, he says the experience also helped him as a litigator, in some ways.
“I have zero nerves about losing,” he told the Daily Report. Likewise, the courthouse carnage made threats of litigation and gamesmanship by some opposing lawyers that once might have worried him seem trivial. “I realized how silly it all was,” Robbins says.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Ga. Courthouse Killer Gets Life; Holdouts Spare Him From Death Penalty”
Gwinnett Daily Post: “The Killer and The Captive: 10 years later Brian Nichols’ hostage recalls ordeal”
WXIA: “10th anniversary of Fulton County Courthouse shooting”
