They're not.
Posted on 03/11/2005 6:39:06 AM PST by mhking
This is a breaking news situation.
A man entered a courtroom in the Fulton County Courthouse this morning and shot a Fulton County Sheriff's deputy, a clerk and a judge; there are reports from both WSB and WAGA, the judge is deceased.
The perp has carjacked multiple vehicles -- now on his third -- and is still at large.
I've just come from downtown Atlanta, and the city is a madhouse.
I have the feeling though, that an ordinary Joe would've gotten a rougher treatment.
This is such a sad sad day.
The Court reporter was beloved by everyone. A beautiful single woman, mother of a college girl.
Am just having a hard time with the sudden randomness of lives lost.
Long time ago, I spent a lot of time in a big city Courthouse and never once thought about personal safety.
The original courthouse was built in 1914. It's been renovated piecemeal over the years, partitions in odd places, closets turned into offices, and so forth. Then a State Court building was added next door (not sure when, but judging from the style, some time in the 60s), but the floors are on different levels, so you have two steps up, four steps down, ramps, odd corners, and passages to nowhere. THEN they recently added the Justice Center Tower in back of the 1914 courthouse, connected by ramps, a couple of bridges, escalators, etc. to the old courthouse.
Add to that a sheriff's department that has been both incompetent and endemically corrupt for years (the former sheriff is under investigation for "losing" several million dollars), plus all the politically correct nonsense that you get in a big city . . . when I was still trying cases you would see a single deputy dozing in a chair at one side of the courtroom. Now, admittedly, I didn't do criminal work, but civil litigants can get pretty hot sometimes too . . .
Nobody wants the job, but somebody is going to have to do something after this.
Maybe. The superior court clerk LOST a bunch of deed books out of the deed room, and title insurance companies started putting riders (and extra premiums) on their Fulton County insurance policies, but so far as I know, nothing was done to clean up the clerk's office.
Of course, nobody DIED in that debacle.
Howdy Meek. :-)
There is just no such thing as perfect adherence to procedure. People are people, not robots, and they will inevitably get careless from time to time. Practice and procedure are there to make sure that the right thing happens as often as possible and minimizes the opportunities for someone to take advantage. Most of the time, it works right. If that wasn't the case, then what happened today wouldn't be so newsworthy.
It is newsworthy because it very rarely happens.
Furthermore, if there was any lapse today it was in not double-teaming the perp. The gender of the deputy isn't nearly the issue. One-on-one is really bad odds nomatter who the deputy is. This perp is apparently even an ex cop. He's smart, and he knows the drills, and it makes him a very effective predator.
Wish you'd gotten to take a couple shots yerself, do ya? How about the court reporter? She deserved it too, huh?
Yeesh.
Howdy! :^)
They're not.
Here's a suggestion: Wait a day or two. The press is sure to announce visitation and funeral arrangements. Why not show up at his wake and ask his surviving family about his rulings?
Just DAMN!!! WTH is wrong with people today?
I have always traveled with my labs and bad guys have never messed with our van.
Getting older and needing potty stops on those day trips I feel very comfortable leaving King Vanity in the van. He asks that I park where he can see me.
I don't have any seats in the van except for the drivers. When I put down the lift to load or unload the chair the boyz are right there, well one now as JC is no longer with us and the two pups are still traveling in crates.
The store carry outs always enjoy visiting with the pups and if we are doing something near the van I leave the back doors open for them to socialize.
Bottom line though bad guys don't know that their bark doesn't mean they bite.
I'd personally be more fearful of your Siamese Cats then your Lab.
Yes...and I apologize if my snide satire offended.
It must be pitch dark in Atlanta right now & a long time with few developments in this story. I'd say Motorist Brian Nichols has pulled off an amazing crime. I'm out of material, anyway...
Good night & God bless.
I don't have any roots in Louisiana, but I know the difference between first cousins, first cousins once removed, second cousins, etc. One of my favorite teachers was my first cousin twice removed. And I have one set of first cousins who are also my third cousins. You can "decode" this, I'm sure, even though you're not from North Carolina.
Well, I think creatively using a celebrity to make a bunch of speeches about a subject he feels very emotionally about, the fact that he carelessly killed his own friend, is a pretty harsh punishment. It was an accident many of us could have had if we hadn't been lucky.
Does it affect your feelings about this murder?
Where did you hear he was an X-cop?
That would explaine how he knew the "secret" of getting the gun out of the holster, that the talking head wouldn't show on FOX news.
Looks like the shooter made a clean break for now. Unbelievable.
Dunno. I just saw where the gal from Loooziana was talking about it, and jumped in, because I can unravel the 'code'. We have to keep the stereotype alive.
I don't know if that's true for sure, but it was upthread someplace. That he had been a cop in NY, but now was a unix admin for UPS, perhaps some kind of "security consultant".
don't have a source for it.
Thinking back, I think I met Judge Barnes in connection with the High School Mock Trial competition one year.
The judicial community in Atlanta is going to have a hard time digesting this. We all have narrow escapes - years ago, when I was a young(er) law clerk, I had a "funny feeling" about a civil litigant that just seemed a little off to me. I recommended to my boss that the court issue a "per curiam" order . . . one not signed by an individual judge but just issued under the seal of the court. Which was done.
About a month later, I heard on the radio that a person of the same name had murdered her entire family. Called the sheriff's office in that jurisdiction, found it was indeed the same individual, and had a very panicky fifteen minutes while I located all our office staff and the court clerk and alerted them to the fact that this woman had killed four people and was still at large.
Nobody at the courthouse was very happy until she was located and arrested.
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