Funding debate halts jury selection

The judge presiding over the murder trial of a man charged with fatally shooting four people in a 2005 rampage suspended jury selection indefinitely Wednesday because the defense hadn’t been adequately funded.

“I’m interested in getting this case tried . . . in a way the Constitution requires,” Superior Court Judge Hilton Fuller said.

Jury selection had resumed Monday after several delays due to defense funding issues. Fuller indicated he would decide later whether to release the 1,100 prospective jurors in the current pool and create a new one.

The trial has been continuously bogged down in friction with the state public defender’s office over fees and expenses for attorneys representing the indigent Brian Nichols.

Nichols is charged with escaping from custody at a downtown Atlanta courthouse, where he was on trial for rape. He is accused of killing the judge presiding over the rape trial, a court reporter, a sheriff’s deputy who chased him outside and a federal agent he encountered at a home a few miles away.

Prosecutors say he took a woman hostage the next day in her suburban Atlanta home, then surrendered. Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty if Nichols is convicted.

In requesting suspension of jury selection, the defense said in court documents Wednesday that it couldn’t continue to subsidize costs with “no realistic end in sight.”

Fuller has ordered the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council to appear at a contempt hearing Monday to explain itself. The council is responsible for Nichols’ defense costs.

But Nichols’ lawyers said in their motion that jury selection needed to end now. They said they had not been able to prepare for the trial without funding.

The cash-strapped council has said that because of the amount already spent on Nichols’ defense -- $1.8 million as of June 30 -- there wasn’t enough money for other cases. The Legislature has refused to step in.

Nichols’ defense got one piece of good news late Wednesday, when Fulton County said it would comply with an order to pay the legal fees of one of Nichols’ four attorneys.

Fuller contended Nichols’ defense costs had reached only $1.2 million. The council stood by its figure and said the average Georgia death penalty case costs the defender about $400,000.