Jury Weighs Life Or Death For Brian Nichols

ATLANTA (AP) - Jurors will return Wednesday to continue deliberating whether to condemn gunman Brian Nichols to death or sentence him to life behind bars for murdering a judge and three other people in violence that began at a downtown Atlanta courthouse.

The jury reached no decision Tuesday on the fate of Nichols after spending much of the day considering the case.

Nichols, 36, was found guilty last month of murder and dozens of other charges for killing the judge, a court reporter and a sheriff’s deputy at the courthouse and a federal agent in an Atlanta neighborhood on March 11, 2005. He could be sentenced to death or to life in prison with or without the possibility of parole.

Nichols 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.