Brian Nichols was going into the court room to face a rape charge. He was not handcuffed---that's against the law in his county, because they don't want to prejudice the jurors. He was only guarded by one deputy, a woman. As the story goes (unless new information comes to light), he took the gun from the woman, shot her, the judge, the stenographer, and another cop who got in his way. He was caught the next day, although those details aren't as important.
Here's what's important: There are two reasons the incident happened, and they both are very stupid ones. The first reason this happened was because the suspect was not handcuffed on his way to the court room! If he had been handcuffed, he wouldn't have been able to get the gun or do any subsequent damage. The idea is that if the jurors see a man coming in with handcuffs, they will immediately, if subconsciously, think, "hey, look, he's got handcuffs. Guilty people wear handcuffs. He's probably guilty." That also applies for laws that don't require the suspect to arrive wearing wearing his prison garb.
Come on here! I think this is taking things to the extreme! Unless you can show me some good psychological data, I doubt that the presence of handcuffs on a suspect can influence the jury that much against him. And even if it did have some psychological effect, the jury is supposed to judge based on the facts presented, not their feelings. If they're basing things on their feelings, they're just incompetent jurors, and handcuffs aren't really gonna matter anyway.
But I could be wrong. Maybe handcuffs really can unfairly influence a jury. So let's look at reason number two: He was escorted into the courtroom by only one deputy, a woman. That's not very smart to begin with. One-on-one is never a good ratio for that sort of thing, even if the guard has the gun. What's more, the guard was a woman. I don't mean this in any sexist way, feminists, but it's just basic fact that anatomically the average man is stronger than the average woman. And at over six feet and two hundred pounds, Nichols wasn't an average man, anyway. And the deputy was a fifty-one year-old grandmother. She didn't exactly have the upper hand here. There's a third issue, too: the night before he had been caught with knives in his boots.
So here's what we have: A suspect who has proven to be dangerous is only guarded by one woman. And look what happened.
I propose, number one, getting rid of the stupid law against handcuffs. The risk of deaths is greater than the risk of influencing the jury, if that influence even exists (although I will retract that if someone shows me psychological data). Number two, require that male suspects be escorted by at least two male guards. Either one of those would have stopped the weekend's nightmare from happening.
In an effort to be fair, we give our criminals too much freedom. I didn't have time to blog about Martha Stewart when she switched from a fancy "prison" to a fancy home "confinement." Don't even get me started on our prison system. But this is just another example of extra latitude to the criminal causing suffering to the innocent.
We suffer by paying taxes to let criminals play video games and computers and all sorts of luxuries while serving their "sentences." And now, four people suffered to let a criminal walk around without influencing a jury. Except they suffered with their lives. How much more suffering must we allow before there is reform?
Edmond the Hun
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