Call for Action Following Courthouse Carnage

ATLANTA — Pressure mounted Monday for swift action to prevent more potentially lethal security lapses at the Fulton County Courthouse, as somber and subdued employees returned to the workplace where three days earlier a state judge and two other people were slain, allegedly by a rampaging prisoner.

“There darn well better be some changes,” said Senior Superior Court Judge Philip F. Etheridge. “We’re not talking rocket science here.”

Police said the suspect in Friday’s courthouse slayings, Brian Gene Nichols, 33, overpowered 51-year-old Deputy Cynthia Hall to obtain the gun that was used in the shootings. Etheridge, referring to having the deputy guard Nichols, a former college football player, said, “You don’t put a grandmother in charge of a linebacker alone.”

Meanwhile, Ashley Smith, who was taken hostage by Nichols but talked her way to freedom and turned him in to police Saturday, issued an emotional plea Monday night for privacy.

“As I am sure you can imagine, this event has been extremely difficult and exhausting for me and my extended family,” said the 26-year-old in a brief televised statement from Augusta, her hometown in eastern Georgia. “I have experienced just about every emotion I could imagine in the span of a few days.”

Smith, who has a 5-year-old daughter who lives with an aunt, has said that her husband was stabbed to death four years ago. Smith lives in Duluth, a suburb of Atlanta.

Although Smith has become the object of national attention, she said her role in bringing Nichols’ alleged reign of violence to a close “was really very small in the scheme of things. The real heroes are the judicial and law enforcement officials who gave their lives and those who risked their lives to bring this to an end.”

Smith, who had been working as a waitress in a sports bar in Gwinnett County, northeast of Atlanta, said she spoke of God, family and the purpose of a person’s life as she urged Nichols to surrender to police.

“He said he thought I was an angel sent from God,” she said Sunday, in the first public retelling of her captivity.

Authorities said Monday they had no reason to doubt her story. Officer Darren Moloney, Gwinnett County police spokesman, said, “The more we talked to her, the more we became convinced” she was telling the truth.

After the courthouse carnage, Fulton County Sheriff Myron E. Freeman, responsible for security at the location, has asked for Atlanta residents’ patience, noting that he has been in the post for only two months. He said he would seek a multiagency investigation to determine how the transport of prisoners to and from the complex could be made more secure.

However, demands for Freeman to take action grew with the media revelation Monday that the attack by Nichols on Deputy Hall, as well as his escape with her gun, was captured by a surveillance camera, but that no one in the control center noticed. Hall, who was injured, remained hospitalized.

Nichols allegedly overpowered the deputy after his handcuffs were removed. They were taken off so the sight of him wearing them would not sway the jury hearing his rape case.

Earlier reports were that Nichols had seized the deputy’s gun from her, but Paul Howard, Fulton County district attorney, said Monday that Nichols grabbed the key to the lockbox where she had her gun, unlocked it and took the weapon.

Etheridge, the judge, said at times he had felt unsafe in his courtroom before a potentially hostile defendant who was more than a match for the sheriff’s deputy detailed to guard him. “We’re not dealing with nice people here,” the judge said. “We’re dealing with some violent people with almost nothing to lose, and they’re dangerous.

“It wasn’t a question of if, it was a question of when,” Etheridge said of the deadly spree.

Courthouse and judicial security was receiving national attention as well. U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would hold congressional hearings on the issue.

Nichols used Hall’s firearm, police said, to fatally shoot Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, 64, and court reporter Julie Ann Brandau, 43, in the courtroom where Nichols was being tried.

Another deputy, Hoyt Teasley, 43, was shot and killed on the street after he confronted the gunman near a courthouse emergency exit.

Outside the courthouse complex Monday, the U.S. flag flew at half-staff. Many employees wore blank, solemn expressions as they waited in line at the lobby’s security checkpoint to have their bags or the contents of their pockets scanned.

“This has been the most traumatic, dramatic mood I’ve ever seen this complex in,” said the Rev. Howard W. Creecy, a Baptist minister who has served for 25 years as Fulton County chaplain. “You can almost walk the halls and hear one continuous sigh, office to office, floor to floor. There is weeping and a great deal of hugging and holding, and echoing off the walls, reverberating, is the word: ‘why?’ ”

Ladisa Robinson said she was having a difficult time focusing on her courthouse job, preparing appeals on the county’s behalf for the Georgia Supreme Court.

“Everyone was pretty lax. We never expected this to happen,” said Robinson, 29. “We just never took seriously the fact that we walk by criminals every day.”

Freeman inherited a sheriff’s department known to have security lapses. Last year, a grand jury said the county jail, also under the sheriff’s purview, was overcrowded and understaffed. Over the last year and a half, at least three suspects have escaped from the courthouse, including an accused cocaine dealer who bolted last month.

Sgt. Nikita Hightower, a spokeswoman for Freeman, said the sheriff was “sticking to his guns,” and wanted an investigation before making modifications to security measures.

“Everybody has their opinion on what’s what,” Hightower said. “We do have a little extra security that has come in to give us a little help.” The increased security, she said, involved reassigning existing department personnel.

On the eighth floor of the old classical Beaux Arts building, yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the double doors of Barnes’ courtroom. Four bouquets of carnations, daisies and roses, placed in memory of the slain judge and court reporter, were propped against the wall.

In the Justice Center Tower next door, Barnes’ calendar was heard by a colleague, Stephanie B. Manis, who declared a mistrial in Nichols’ rape case. Lawyer Barry Hazen, who had been defending Nichols in the case, said it was a waste of taxpayer money to proceed.

Nichols, who also is suspected in the slaying of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, David G. Wilhelm, 40, was transferred Monday from the custody of federal marshals to the custody of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department, after the U.S. attorney’s office dropped a preliminary holding charge against Nichols.

Howard, the county district attorney, said Monday that Nichols would have his first court appearance this morning. Howard was quoted by CNN as saying he planned to charge Nichols with four murders, as well as a series of carjackings and assaults.

Asked if he would seek the death penalty, Howard did not answer directly, but strongly implied he would, CNN reported.

“My gut tells me that this is one of the most gut-wrenching crimes that has ever taken place in our county, and so maybe one can interpret from that,” Howard was quoted as saying.