Don't worry about it. He'll probably be out of the slammer in a few years & ready to murder again. -- Murderer Nichol’s tab: $2.9 million and growing

From the AJC:

It cost almost $3 million in public money -- at least -- to defend courthouse murderer Brian Nichols, according to records released Tuesday.

The state picked up most of the cost, more than $2.3 million, while Fulton County paid lead defense attorney Henderson Hill almost $496,000 from January 2008 until Nichols was sentenced Dec. 13.

“It was a Cadillac defense,” said Michael Mears, who was at the head of the Public Defender Standards Council when the Nichols case began.

The extraordinary cost of defending Nichols almost crushed the then-new statewide indigent defense system and some feared it would also endanger the death penalty in Georgia. Some feared the costs would be higher than the tally reported Tuesday.

Mears, now a law professor, said the defense of the man known as the courthouse killer should not have exceeded $500,000 in defense costs.

But it was six times that.

The statewide indigent defense system, which included the Capital Defender office, was only three months old when Nichols escaped on March 11, 2005, from the Fulton County Courthouse where he was on trial for rape. He murdered Judge Rowland Barnes, court stenographer Julie Ann Brandau, deputy Sgt. Hoyt Teasley and federal agent David Wilhelm that day.

It is believed to be the most expensive state death penalty trial in Georgia.

It cost more than $4 million to defend Eric Robert Rudolph on federal charges in the fatal bombing of a Birmingham abortion clinic, and he pleaded guilty before trial. Rudolph also pleaded guilty to bombings in Atlanta, where he was represented by salaried federal defenders.