Atlanta Fallout

Hobby horse alert. Now that Brian Nichols is back in custody, bloggers can move to the "bigger" issues at work in this fiasco.

A poster at Blogcritics falls into to the Jarvis camp-- blaming the escape on our concern for the rights of the accused.

I also wanted to note another instance where the system's bending over backwards to ensure a fair trial for the accused may have turned around and bitten the system hard, on it's collective ass. At the very least, they should have kept the orange-red jumpsuit and shackles. If it was good enough for Denny Rader, the accused BTK Strangler, serial murderer of at least 10 people, to appear in jailhouse coveralls and chains at his arraignment, a man who on the surface had always appeared to most to be an excessively law-abiding citizen, it was good enough for Brian Nichols.

Over at Michelle Malkin there are plenty of people ready to conclude that the whole thing happened because the deputy escorting Nichols was a woman. The discussion has gone to absurd lengths with some wondering why a female officer was allowed to walk beside him after he was arrested and manacled on Saturday.

Fortunately, there are cooler heads posting as well. Stop the Bleating gets at the critical issue-- Nichols was a tough customer who could have overpowered many male LEOs. The big mistake was letting a single guard try to handle him while wearing a gun.

It's pretty clear here that that failure belongs to the Sheriff's department in Fulton county. Stephanie Key has a series of posts on the many problems in that department. This is not a matter of PC sensibilities, but of a poorly run department and political in-fighting.

Given that, it seems a real stretch to blame this on "bending over backwards to ensure a fair trial for the accused." Security in the courthouse was not compromised by Supreme Court decisions. It was lax because the people in charge could not be bothered to treat it seriously.