Send e-mail to letters@gainesvilletimes.com (no attached files, please, which can contain viruses); fax to 770-532-0457; or mail to The Times, P.O. Box 838, Gainesville, GA 30503. Include full name, hometown and phone number for confirmation. They should be limited to one topic on issues of public interest and may be edited for content and length. Letters forwarded from other sources or those involving personal, business or legal disputes, poetry, expressions of faith or memorial tributes may be rejected. You may be limited to one letter per month, two on a single topic. Submitted items may be published in print, electronic or other forms. Letters, columns and cartoons express the opinions of the authors and not of The Times editorial board.
Only a lawyer can justify the outrageous sum of money that was spent defending Brian Nichols on his murder charge. The man murdered three people in a court room in front of witnesses. Mr. Nichols never showed any remorse. The public defenders office should have allocated $500 to his defense, the trial should have been held the following week and Mr. Nichols should have been made comfortable while he waited on his turn to take a seat in the electric chair.
No reasonable person would have spent their own money trying to defend this animal for his heinous crime. No hard-working, law-abiding citizen could afford a small fraction of the amount of money that was spent on this case, so why should a person deemed indigent receive a legal defense "team" sparing no cost?
Defense lawyers don't look for guilt or innocence; they look for loopholes, and in this instance, they couldn't find one. The legal system of our great country was set up in order to give people a fair trial, and over time it has become corrupted by greed, mostly by lawyers. But after all, lawyers run the system.
John Webb
Gainesville