Jamala Rogers – Brian Nichols as King Kong

When I first heard about the courthouse shootings in Atlanta, it sounded like the actions of a cornered human being gone berserk. I found it curious but not unusual that the media often projected photos of the white victims. I was also intrigued why there was no interest in pursuing the shooter’s claim that he was a “soldier on a mission.” There was no psychological profile done, as there usually is when some average white Joe goes off the deep end.

Needing answers that weren’t readily available, I decided to go to the people when I recently visited Atlanta.

Brian Nichols was a bright, articulate, easygoing brother with no violent criminal record. He did have woman problems. Nichols’ longtime girlfriend severed their relationship when she found out another woman was pregnant with his baby. The sentiment among the black Atlantans I talked to is that the jilted lover cried “rape” in revenge for Nichols’ infidelity.

Brian Nichols had been charged with sexual assault of his girlfriend, and the court case ended in a mistrial when jurors deadlocked 8 to 4 on an acquittal. A blood-thirsty prosecution wouldn’t accept that its case was flimsy, and proceeded immediately to get another trial. The prospect of facing a second trial and its possible negative outcomes must have been unbearable for Nichols. He took matters into his own hands, and the subsequent shocking drama played itself out.

I am a feminist with strong views about any violence against women; rape is no exception. I don’t believe a man has license to a woman’s body just because he is a husband or boyfriend.

However, having been involved in miscarriages of justice for a few decades, I also know there are cases when the cry of “rape” has been invoked by women for a variety of reasons. I know of cases where girlfriends have used it against their boyfriends while in a fit of anger and, once calm, saw the legal consequences of their accusations. They then attempted to recant their story.

Unfortunately, once the U.S. just-us system has swallowed you whole, it is doubtful that it will belch you back out. When and if you come out the other end, you do so in pieces that never quite fit together again.

There has not been much focus on the charges of the first trial, which makes me suspicious. Maybe the jury foreman, a white male, summed it up when he said the prosecution brought “poor evidence” that was insufficient to convict the defendant and they brought “an innocent man to the courtroom who shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” Who wants to hear that?

If Nichols was innocent of the charges against him, charges that had already caused him to lose his lucrative job as a computer engineer, one can only imagine that thoughts about his future kept coming to a dead end.

Nichols recalled later that he kept looking at the overwhelming number of black inmates around him as he awaited the second trial. He referred to the situation as “systematic slavery,” in which blacks make up a mere 13 percent of the population but a staggering 70-90 percent of those incarcerated.

Nichols may have pondered that black men have the highest rates of unemployment and homicides. That his life expectancy as a black man in America was 8 years less his white male counterpart. That racial health disparities would only become greater in the face of cutbacks in Medicaid and employer health benefits.

Whether his actions were a bold, bloody political statement or whether he was psychologically overwhelmed, Nichols obviously knew his fate when he told hostage, Ashley Smith, that he was “dead already.”

I don’t believe that Nichols’ deadly attempts to illuminate the wrongs of the justice system will bring about reforms. The prison-industrial complex still licks its chops at the sight of a black man standing in a courtroom.

What is likely to happen is that Smith, who showed compassion under incredible circumstances, will be lifted up as a national heroine. There will be many interviews, maybe a book deal and a Hollywood version of the incident that will have Smith looking like Fay Wray taming King Kong.