Chattanooga firefighter Marvin Nicholson’s murder trial ended with a hung jury in March, but he’s still sitting in jail on a $450,000 bond.
“We think he needs to get out and work,” Mr. Nicholson’s defense attorney Johnny Houston said Friday. “But there’s no way his family can make that kind of bond.”
Mr. Nicholson’s case will be discussed today in Hamilton County Criminal Court, where Judge Barry Steelman is expected to set a new trial date in the 2006 abduction and shooting death of a 15-year-old boy.
Mr. Houston said Friday he will make a motion to reduce bond. As it stands now, Mr. Nicholson’s family would have to pay 10 percent or $45,000 of the bond amount in order to free him until the case is resolved.
Before the first trial earlier this year, Mr. Nicholson had spent about a year and a half in the Hamilton County Jail with no bond, charged with the first-degree murder, felony murder and especially aggravated kidnapping of James Citizen.
When the jury announced it could not reach a unanimous verdict, Hamilton County District Attorney Bill Cox said he would retry the case. Two of the 12 jurors wanted to acquit Mr. Nicholson of the charges.
Mr. Cox declined Friday to comment on the pending case.
Mr. Houston said that people who face the same charges as Mr. Nicholson “frequently make lesser bond.”
In the motion to reduce bond, Mr. Houston attached 14 certificates showing how Mr. Nicholson has completed several jail programs such as anger management and alcoholics anonymous classes.
Mr. Houston has asked the court to lower his client’s bond to a “makeable” amount or at least allow him to go on pretrial house arrest pending the second trial.
Mr. Citizen was killed Oct. 3, 2006. According to trial testimony and previous newspaper reports, he was kidnapped at gunpoint and shot in the northern part of Hamilton County along Sims Harris Road.
Several of Mr. Nicholson’s relatives testified on his behalf at the trial, saying he couldn’t have killed Mr. Citizen because he was with his sister at Erlanger hospital during the time eyewitnesses placed him at the kidnapping scene.
