Tuesday, Sept. 30th, 3:21pm

Rev. Samia Giddings, Esq. is an interesting lady.  She’s not just a preacher, she’s a lawyer. More specifically a criminal defense lawyer who works for the Public Defender’s Office.  She has extremely long fingernails, which the jury gets to see closeup when she holds the prosecution’s toy gun to describe what she saw Brian Nichols do on March 11, 2005.  She was headed into the courtroom when she heard an alarm sound.  She knew someone had opened the emergency door of a stairwell, since she had opened that same door once.  She says she saw a nicely-dressed black man come running out the door.  When he got to the sidewalk, he fired into the air.  Then she heard the alarm again and saw a deputy come out of the same door.  That’s when she saw Nichols turn and fire at the deputy.  She says she saw the deputy hold his chest, like ‘I’ve been shot.’  Sgt. Hoyt Teasley was not wearing his bullet-proof vest that day.

Tuesday, Sept. 30th, 1:09pm

It’s rare for the prosecution to go out of order with its witnesses.  Up until this point, they’ve done a pretty good job of calling witnesses in the same order of the events that unfolded.  But right now, the jury is hearing from an FBI agent who processed Ashley Smith’s apartment.  This agent must have a scheduling conflict which prevents her from testifying later.

Tuesday, Sept. 30th 12:28pm

Right now, retired Sgt. Jarvis Williams is on the stand.  He told jurors that after people in Judge Barnes’s chambers pressed the panic button, he heard on his radio someone from Central Control calling for Sgt. Grantley White to give his status.  White was the deputy assigned to Judge Barnes’s courtroom.  Here’s the thing.  White has a slight accent, since he was born in Barbados.  His radio code was 1358.  So on the radio, when White would announce himself, it would sound like, “Dirt-teen fifty eight” with his Island accent.  Well, that day, when Williams heard “Thirteen fifty eight.  Clear,” he didn’t hear the accent. That’s when he knew there was a problem.  Witnesses testified earlier, that was Brian Nichols on the other end.

Tuesday, Sept. 30th, 9:13am

It breaks my heart to see a man in uniform cry.  Sgt. Vincent Owens testified that he came running toward courtroom 8-H the morning of March 11, 2005 to answer a distress call.  On the 8th floor bridge, he saw a met man in a blue dress shirt running in the opposite direction from the old courthouse toward the new courthouse.  The Sgt. asked him what was going on.  The man threw up his hands and mumbled something like, “I dont’ know what’s going on.”  The man kept running.  When the Sgt. entered the courtroom and saw the bodies of the judge and court reporter, he went looking for the man in the blue shirt.  He cried as he recalled the events of that day.  You can tell he feels a sense of guilt, since he unknowingly let Nichols get away and kill two more people, including one of his colleagues.

Monday, Sept. 29th, 3:45

The media room has never been quieter than when prosecutors played the audiotape that was rolling when Nichols shot the judge and court reporter.  On the stand was Lynnette Clark Davis, who was Judge Barnes’s temporary staff attorney. (His full-time staff attorney was on maternity leave at the time.)  Davis is the one whose screams you hear on the tape for almost two minutes until deputies arrive.  After the tape was over, she cried so hard on the witness stand, that the judge called a 20 minute break.

Monday, Sept. 29th, 1:54pm

The 17th witness of the trial was clearly still shaken up.  He says he thinks about the murders often.   He is Richard Robbins, an attorney who was arguing against Ms. Waller in Judge Barnes’s courtroom, when the shooting happened.  Robbins was sitting at the prosecutor’s table at that moment.  After Nichols shot the judge and court reporter, Robbins remembers Nichols putting the gun to his chest.  The whole time, he was thinking, ‘This is the defendant scheduled to be on trial after our motion.  He’s just shot the judge and court reporter and now he wants to shoot the prosecutor… and I’m sitting at the prosecutor’s table.’  Nichols did not shoot him, so Robbins fled, the whole time thinking he was being chased and would probably be shot in the back.  Interestingly, Robbins also prepared a document 17 days later listing all the security lapses he witnessed in the Fulton County Courthouse that day.

Monday, Sept. 29th, 12:48pm

My boss agrees with me that the ‘confetti’ comment was too graphic for TV.  That’s why you won’t hear it on our station.

Monday, Sept. 29th, 12:15pm

Pretty graphic testimony.  Attorney Nicole Day Waller is on the stand now.  She’s the first witness this jury has heard from who witnessed any of the murders.  She was arguing a motion on a civil case before Judge Barnes.  The judge had allowed argument on that motion before the start of Nichols’ trial that day.  She says she saw a well-dressed black man quietly come in behind the judge, through a door off to the side of the judge’s bench.  She saw his arm outstretched and assumed he was a law clerk, handing the judge a piece of paper.  Instead, she heard the gunshot and saw brain matter scatter like confetti.  (I’m about to call my news director to see if we should use that description on TV.) She then saw Nichols turn, point the gun at Julie Brandau and kill her, too.

Monday, Sept. 29th, 10:34am

Sgt. White is back on the stand.  He’s holding it together today, even when prosecutors showed him the gruesome photographs of Judge Barnes and Julie Brandau from the crime scene.  We chose not to show video over our webcast from the evidence camera.  The four most graphic pictures were not published at all in open court.  Instead, the pictures were passed from juror to juror in the jury box.  Pretty much the whole time, Brian Nichols looked down the defense table where he’s seated.

Friday, Sept. 26th, 6:05pm

It was hard not to cry, covering the trial today.  Retired Sgt. Grantley White broke down while testifying about the shootings that happened on his watch, in the courtroom he was assigned to protect.  He testified that he walked into the Judge’s chambers that morning, and saw Brian Nichols in the chambers pointing a gun at him.  He tried to disarm Nichols, but Nichols told him, “Don’t do it, Sarge.”  Nichols took his gun, told him to handcuff two staffers and then himself.  When it was all over, he saw the bloody scene in the courtroom.  He’ll be back on the stand on Monday.