Brian Nichols and the high price of death

The New Yorker as a very interesting article on Brian Nichols-- the man who murdered four people in a jail escape turned rampage in Atlanta in 2005.

Death In Georgia

The high price of trying to save an infamous killer’s life.

His trial is at a standstill because the state of Georgia does not want to pay for his defense. It's become a political issue and that is never good for justice. Nichols's escape provided a log of blog fodder for a couple of days in 2005. (See here and here). Then we moved on.

That's too bad because there were some serious issues raised about the procedures in the jail that allowed this crime to happen.

This blew my mind when i read it in the article.

The response by law-enforcement officials to Nichols’s crimes was marred by terrible errors. After the shanks were discovered, Judge Barnes said he wanted the sheriff’s department, which handles security in the courthouse, to provide Nichols with additional guards, yet he was escorted to court by a single female deputy sheriff. Part of his attack on the deputy was captured by surveillance cameras, but no one was monitoring them. The Atlanta police, who did not begin searching for Nichols until forty minutes after the first shootings, failed to seal off access to two parking garages where Nichols had been seen; he escaped from both. During a subsequent investigation, five sheriff’s deputies were found to have lied about their actions with regard to Nichols. Eight deputies were fired for misconduct, all but two of whom were later rehired.

Four people dead and most of those involved escape consequences.