Wait's wrong with saying that? it's true...

I don't blame the guy for intentionally getting off the case. They should give the case to that other judge who was giving Fuller crap for giving the defense too much money.

Noisy withdrawal.

SUCKS FOR NICHOLS!!

I say that because as an Atlanta lawyer whose been following the case, i can summarize the general Atlanta legal community (including judges, prosecutors, politicians and defense lawyers) as "why if Fuller pampering the defense and wasting 3/4 of the budget for all death penalty public defenders on a guy we know is guilty " (i.e., all the delays regarding the jury and having 4 lawyers). There is no chance Nichols is going to get a judge who will give the defense such leeway. I mean putting a case on hold because 1.2 million waste enough for a defense!?!?!?!

SUCKS FOR NICHOLS!!

I say that because as an Atlanta lawyer whose been following the case, i can summarize the general Atlanta legal community (including judges, prosecutors, politicians and defense lawyers) as "why if Fuller pampering the defense and wasting 3/4 of the budget for all death penalty public defenders on a guy we know is guilty " (i.e., all the delays regarding the jury and having 4 lawyers). There is no chance Nichols is going to get a judge who will give the defense such leeway. I mean putting a case on hold because 1.2 million waste enough for a defense!?!?!?!

Toobin should have known better in any event. Toobin is smarter and more qualified than Judge Whoever-He-Is, and knows perfectly well that a judge speaking on the record to the press about a case pending before him is an incredibly foolish thing to do and can only lead to problems. As a Harvard alum and former AUSA, Toobin should have exercised better judgment and omitted the judge's statement from his article.

Fuller was "pampering" the defense, 5:11, because Nichols faces the death penalty. The defense asked the DA, Paul Howard, to take the death penalty off the table and he wouldn't do it. No word on how much the prosecution has spent. The defense has said it's cost so much because they have to respond to the prosecution, whic has put big resources in the case.

Great logic 5:22. We should take the death penalty off of the table for any defendant who is able to secure able, out-of-town counsel that can drive the costs up by communting in and charging hourly rates on an open-ended basis. Did you read the article? Toobin's point was that Georgia's system caused this debacle because it doesn't cap. (or otherwise limit) what can be spent (read: wasted) on defending the obviously guilty from the punishment they deserve like many states (smartly) do. Allowing admitted (yes, he admitted everything to police) killers like Nichols to avoid the death penalty by abusing the system, hiring touched-by-an-angle experts, and making a capital conviction just too expensive is a great idea.

Lat, the comments from the SCOTUS hiring update have been disabled, but I wanted to say that Katzmann often team-hires clerks with Judge Kaplan. Not just Rakoff.

Not to mention, a courtroom full of eye witnesses, saw Nichols draw down and shoot the judge and his court reporter. Witnesses outside the courthouse saw him kill the 3rd of 4 victims.

I don't care what sort of childhood Nichols had (which, according to the article, was middle-class) or how bat-shit crazy he is. Like a lame horse or a rabbid dog, he needs to be put down. An adequate defense doesn't mean the state must waste millions on frivilous motion practice for this guy when truly innocent people (or people who's guilt is at least in doubt) need that money for their defense.

5:22

to add to 5:35, let's not forget that the $1.2 million that went to Nichols, who we are 100% sure did it, is coming out of the money spent on the defense of potentially innocent death penalty defendant.

Why are we having an insanity trial? It's not like this was in the moment. He took a gun from a guard, walked over to the judges chambers, which is a completely different building connected by a sky bridge (roughly probably a 5 minute walk, during which he must have appeared calm enough not to draw attention to himself) went in the back door and shot the judge from behind.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22924814/

HAGERSTOWN, Md. - A county judge was reprimanded for calling three black female lawyers "the Supremes" in court and advising the defendant to get "an experienced male attorney."

Washington County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone has acknowledged that his comments suggested racial and sexual bias. In his written response to a complaint, Boone said he was trying to protect the three public defenders from representing a difficult defendant.

5:35 et al:

Yes, we know Nichols killed four innocent human beings. But he has a constitutional right to adequate representation. That's the way our democracy works. 54-count indictment, 11 crime scenes, 400 witnesses for the prosecution=$1.2 million and counting.

Perhaps the problem is the death penalty. It was reinstated in the US in 1976, but has been abolished in almost all of Europe plus Canada. According to Amnesty International, via Wikipedia, these are the countries that executed people in 2006:

Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, North Korea, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Uganda, the United States of America, Vietnam, Yemen.

Nice company to be in, no?

Studies in some of the 36 states with the death penalty show capital cases are far more expensive than the cost of life imprisonment. For instance, Duke University found the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution OVER the
costs of sentencing murderers to life imprisonment. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level.
--from DeathPenaltyInfo.org

This case is being appallingly run. Surely there is a Chief Justice who can step in to impose sanity.

I wouldn't be surprised if it were an accidentally-on purpose disqualification. Judge Fuller has been raked over the coals for this trial, when he's only been trying to do the right thing at each step of the way. The problem is that redneck Georgia doesn't adequately fund its public defenders, and they've run out of money. (Even though the lawyer has been working for half his usual fee.)

Georgia needs to ask what is more important: its money, or killing.

Yes, he deserved an ADEQUATE defense. but that was a million dollars ago. Regardless of what the charges are against him, this sum is absurd or otherwise we are rewarding him for being poor.

Current GA Defense Rules:
Indigent = We'll import the best lawyer money can buy and give them unlimited spending power.

Make more than 20K a year = you have to mortgage your home and even then only afford Loyola 2L.

I mean afford P'Tmon, or whoever that was

http://www.3lforhire.com/

Adequate defense in this case probably would cost well over a million at market rates given the tremendous scope of what the prosecution is bringing in (absolutely everything that happened).

400 witnessess? Why? You only need a handful to say "he did it" and I doubt most of them have anything to do with the penalty phase of the trial or the insanity defense.

400 witnesses. Defense isn't wasting state money, prosecution is.

What a bunch of winners we have on this blog. "Whic", "touched-by-an-angle experts" (was it an acute or obtuse angle?), "communting", "frivilous", and "rabbid" - lovely words, all of them.

Guess being able to write isn't a requirement for admission at Samford Law.

but why should he still get a better defense than what everyone else could afford if they had the same crimes against them? (The upper class in Atlanta that could afford such a defense is very small. The vast majority of Georgians are poor city folk or poor country folk.)

Every word only further establishes the judge as an idiot: how he could be "on background" yet be quoted usefully without identifying him as the judge is a mystery. But even putting that aside, he would STILL BE VIOLATING THE CANONS OF JUDICIAL CONDUCT by speaking about the case, EVEN IF Toobin "did not directly quote him!" Just talking to Toobin about the case was a violation. Even if "nobody found out."

What a stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid asshole. Thank god he is gone from this case.

According to 5:35's logic, it's fair to cap the cost of the defense at some arbitrary amount like $25,000 but yet give the prosecution a blank check to pursue the case to the hilt. That can't be right.

And 11:07, no one's saying he gets a "better defense" than "poor city folk or poor country folk." If one of said folk committed a multiple murder and were indigent, they would be entitled to a defense at the public's expense just like Nichols.

Prosecution expenses and presentation in this case are absurd. Who is paying their bill? Oh, right, the people of Georgia. 400 witnesses? Give me a freaking break. Jeffery Dahmer went down with a fraction of that effort - and was found sane.

The guy kills four people in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, at least partially on tape, does not deny any of it, and you need 400 witnessess to convict him and give him the death penalty in America's favoriate source of Supreme Court law?

Having to list 400 witnesses is different than actually calling them you dork. If the State doesn't list everyone and everything that was there in a capital case some Ignorance Project schmo will accuse them 20 years from now of withholding evidence and demand a new trial.

7:46, "Ignorance Project," eh? So everyone on Death Row all across the nation is 100% guilty, and every inmate who was exonerated and freed should still be there?

You Rush Limbaugh types make me ashamed to be a lawyer.

11:49 I think what 11:07 means by "poor city folk and poor country folk", is the regular guy, or as the news likes to call it the fleecing of the middle class. All but a handful of people are too wealthy (too not poor) to be considered indigent, but do not have access +1.2 million. Thus, in this case an indigent gets a better defense than likely you or , I know, me.

8:53: That's actually a very good point. I'm pretty appalled by the states that don't have a public defender system. To do otherwise seems like more trouble than it's worth, especially in GA where there's no cap.

I was on a death penalty case and it seemed like the definition of "indigent" was pretty broad. It wasn't in GA, though.

I blame the following people in order for all of this.
1. Brian Nichols
2. His parents
3. The female guard who got her ass beat
4. The juror who hung the rape trial the first time
5. Judge Fuller
6. Whoever came up with the idea that it's prejudicial to have the accused in handcuffs at trial.
7 The prosecutor who couldn't get a conviction the first time.
8. The prison guards who haven't looked the other way, while some inmate shanks him to gather favor with the warden (or does that only happen in movies)

8:45 based on that post the profession should be ashamed to have you. Stop drinking the propaganda koolaid and explore what really is and is not an "exoneration."

More to the point, this clown in Atlanta should definitely be there.

Why can't we ever have any positive lawyer stories? It seems like every lawyer of the day or judge of the day is an asshole who did something shameful. We're all adults here, we don't have to be titillated all the time. What about the lawyers that are doing interesting things and helping people?

Oh, I forgot, it seems like somebody on this board is just bitter at the legal profession in general.

"We're all adults here, we don't have to be titillated all the time."

Yes we do. More L/JotD freak shows!

shut up 10:55

here's a good lawyer story. comments, 746?

(MANY, LOUISIANA; January 14, 2008) – Rickey Johnson, who has been incarcerated for nearly 26 years for a rape he did not commit, will be released today based on DNA results proving his innocence, according to the Innocence Project, which represents him.

Johnson was arrested in 1982 for the rape of a woman in Many in July 1982. The victim in the crime said a man broke into her home at 1 a.m. and stayed for several hours, during which he raped her. She later identified Johnson in a photo array which included an eight-year-old photo of Johnson and just two other photos. Johnson was convicted of the rape in January 1983 and sentenced to life without parole. He has been at Louisiana’s Angola Farm Prison ever since.

In June 2007, the Innocence Project (which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law) asked Sabine Parish District Attorney Don Burkett to agree to DNA testing on a vaginal swab collected after the rape. Within days, Burkett agreed, and testing was conducted. The DNA profile did not match Johnson, and late last week state officials entered the DNA profile in a database of convicted offenders – yielding a match to John Carnell McNeal, who was already in prison for an identical rape in the same apartment complex just nine months after the rape for which Johnson was wrongfully convicted. After McNeal was convicted of the April 1983 rape, he was sentenced to life without parole and has been serving time at Angola Farm with Johnson; the two men were acquaintances for the last two decades.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/1117.php

Better lawyer stories:

“When post-conviction DNA testing is conducted, the test results in about half the cases further implicate the defendant.” The Innocence Project: DNA News, Peter J. McQuillan (www.innocenceproject.org/dnanews/index/php April 29, 2005).

"Of course even in identifying exonerees, the dissent is willing to accept anybody's say-so. It engages in no critical review, but merely parrots articles or reports that support its attack on the American criminal justice system [sort of like 11:22?] . . .

"In its inflation of the word "exoneration," the Gross article hardly stands alone; mischaracterization of reversible error as actual innocence is endemic in abolitionist rhetoric, and other prominent catalogues of "innocence" in the death-penalty context suffer from the same defect. Kansas v. Marsh, 126 S.Ct. 2516 (June 16, 2006) (Scalia, J. concurring)

"Today we got just one answer, and one man cannot speak for the correctness of the verdicts in a thousand based on the correctness of one."

The Innocence Project: Press Room, Peter Neufeld, press release January 12, 2006 commenting on DNA results which confirmed Roger Keith Coleman (tested posthumously, who was purported also to be “innocent”) was in fact the perpetrator of the crime for which he was executed.

Brian Nicholes wouldn't get a new trial for these murders for this if God Himself demanded it.

The prosecution is absolutely wasting money by making the case as inclusive as they are. Wasting their own money, and wasting the state's money again through the public defender funding that has to review and prepare for the fifty thousand pages or whatever it is.

For that matter, just throw him in SHU for the rest of his life and forget about the death penalty. Same degree of incapacitation and you save millions.

7:46/9:01/11:55 = Federalist Society troll or junior state prosecutor.

Right, so four convenient quotes, including a Scalia concurring opinion, damn the entire Innocence Project. Great argument.

Your first quote just goes to prove what an assclown you are. If half of post-conviction DNA tests implicate the defendant, what about the remaining half? Oops.

Obviously, if a jury convicted them, they're all guilty - because we all know how reliable juries can be. One of those reliable juries made sure O.J. could spend the rest of his retirement on the golf course looking for the true killers of his wife and Ron Goldman.