Jury at impasse in courthouse shooting trial

ATLANTA - A third day of jury deliberations ended Thursday as jurors reported they were unable to reach a unanimous decision on whether to sentence courthouse gunman Brian Nichols to life in prison or to death, and the judge's order to resume negotiations appeared to do little to break the impasse.

The jury took 12 hours last month to find Nichols guilty of murder and dozens of other counts in the 2005 killings. He was on trial for rape when he grabbed a guard's gun and fatally shot the judge, a court reporter and a sheriff's deputy in the courthouse. He fled and killed a federal agent in an Atlanta neighborhood.

But Thursday morning, after more than 20 hours of deliberating how to sentence Nichols, the panel told Superior Court Judge James Bodiford it was split 9-3. The judge ordered jurors to continue deliberating, but a few hours later the jury reported no breakthroughs. They will return Friday morning to continue their discussions. The jurors did not say which way the majority is leaning.

Before they were dismissed for the day, the jurors asked to hear an audiotape of a telephone call made by Nichols in which he apparently threatened to kill Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.

When the same tape was played in court last month, defense attorneys asked the judge to declare a mistrial on grounds that prosecutors failed to first provide them with a transcript of the call.

Bodiford, who noted that the tape had "reared its ugly head again," initially decided to allow the jury to listen to the call before backing down amid a fresh round of objections from Nichols' lawyers.

"I don't worry about saving face," he said. "I just worry about doing the right thing."

A deadlocked jury would take a death sentence off the table for prosecutors, who have warned jurors Nichols would hatch another escape plot if he is not put to death.

Georgia law requires that a death sentence must be a unanimous jury decision. If at least seven of the 12 jurors vote for death or for life in prison without parole, the judge must impose a life sentence but can choose whether it is with or without possibility of parole. It is likely Nichols would spend the rest of his life behind bars regardless of the decision.

At least three of the jurors signaled during jury selection that they were reluctant about approving a death penalty, although the three also said they would consider giving Nichols capital punishment.

Nichols, 37, confessed to the killings but claimed he was legally insane and that he believed he was a slave rebelling against his masters. Prosecutors argued that he concocted the delusions to avoid the death penalty.

Nichols was being escorted to his trial for rape when he beat a deputy guarding him and stole her gun. He burst into the courtroom and shot and killed Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, court reporter Julie Ann Brandau and Deputy Hoyt Teasley.

He fled downtown Atlanta and managed to evade hundreds of police officers searching for him overnight. In Atlanta's posh Buckhead neighborhood, he shot and killed federal agent David Wilhelm at a house the agent was renovating.

Nichols was captured the next day in suburban Gwinnett County after a woman he took hostage, Ashley Smith Robinson, alerted police to his whereabouts. Smith Robinson was credited with bringing a peaceful ending to the rampage by appealing to Nichols' religious beliefs and giving him illegal drugs.