Ga. court shooting trial resumes in July

The murder trial of accused courthouse shooter Brian Nichols will resume July 10, a judge decided Monday even as he considered hearing the three-year-old case at another courthouse.

The trial was suspended during jury selection in October because of problems funding Nichols' defense. Those problems have not been completely resolved, but Judge James Bodiford has sought to move the case along.

The case will resume with the same jury pool on a date roughly midway between what prosecutors and defense attorneys had sought. At the hearing Monday, prosecutors asked that the trial resume June 16 while the defense wanted a Sept. 8 date.

"This case needs a start date, a real start date," Bodiford said. Now, the question is where to hold the trial.

Up until now, the plan was to hold the trial in the Fulton County Courthouse complex, where the March 11, 2005, shooting spree began.

Defense lawyers had previously asked that the trial be moved to another location in the county, but that request was denied by the previous judge overseeing the case because no other courthouse was suitable or was willing to host the trial.

Bodiford, appointed last month as the replacement judge, agreed Monday to consider whether the Richard B. Russell federal building a few blocks away is suitable and available.

U.S. District Judge Jack T. Camp, the chief judge at the federal courthouse, said that he is open to having the courthouse host Nichols' state trial, but that issues over space, security and resources would have to be resolved first.

"I feel we have an obligation to help if we can," Camp said. "We would have to do that in a way that wouldn't shut down the federal court in Atlanta."

Authorities say Nichols was being escorted to a courtroom for his rape retrial when he stole a deputy's gun. He is accused of killing the judge in the rape case, a court reporter, a sheriff's deputy and a federal agent before surrendering the next day.

The murder trial was suspended in October because the state public defender's office had stopped paying Nichols' lawyers. Some money has since been offered for Nichols' current and future defense costs, but money past due has, for the most part, not been made available.

Lawyers handling other indigent capital cases in Georgia also are owed money. The Legislature has a measure pending that would require counties to chip in funding for indigent defendants in some capital cases.