Fulton County Court Shooting, 2005, by Anonymous

From MemoryArchive

Who: Anonymous
What: Fulton County Courthouse
When: 3/11/05
Where: Atlanta,GA

My wife, (fiance at the time) was studying criminal trial procedure for a criminology degree and had been observing the Nichols rape trial in Atlanta. We were getting our degrees from University of West Georgia, but had to drive more than an hour on off mornings when we had the free time to observe the procedings. The first trial was a mistrial and after observing it, we were convinced the defense might get Mr. Nichols off. There were several errors on the part of the police in the investigation and the rape victim seemed by our observations to be lying. We had just woke up in our apartment and were planning to watch the hearings for the case and check out another case that was going to court. As we were about to leave, we heard it over the news that there was a shooting at the Fulton County Courthouse in downtown Atlanta. We followed the news reports and were shocked to hear that Nichols was the one they suspected of doing the shootings. We had been convinced from the evidence we had heard against him, he was not guilty of rape and kidnapping. He struck us as a intelligent man, who was caught up in a bad situation. We did not drive to Atlanta and watched the news that day for information. As we all know, he turned himself in the following day, but not until he had murdered several people. We had sat in Judge Barnes's courtroom several times before and we were saddened to hear he had been murdered. Now, two years later the case is slowly coming to trial.