For a mother, the death penalty reversal for the man convicted of killing her 23-year-old pregnant daughter, Nikia Gilbreath, is a hard blow.

“The three judges sit on their thrones and come up with an overturn of a death penalty,” said Linda Tucker, Nikia’s mother. “Obviously it’s never happened to them — that’s all I can say.”

The judges she’s referring to are the three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Atlanta that on Jan. 5 reversed James Ward’s death sentence, but upheld his conviction.

On July 12, 1991 — two days before what would have been Nikia’s 25th birthday — Ward was convicted in Walker County Superior Court for the murder of Nikia and her unborn son. Nikia was five months pregnant.

The death sentence was recently overturned because of “improper bailiff-jury communication.” One of the ju-rors reportedly asked a bailiff if a life sentence without parole was an option, and the bailiff responded that it wasn’t.

The court has concluded that this exchange might have affected Ward’s constitutional right to a fair sentence.

Linda does not think so.

“There’s nobody any more straight-laced or firm (as the bailiffs),” she said. “They didn’t do anything, and any-body that knows them knows that. I have a hard time believing anything went wrong there.”

Life without parole was not a sentencing option until 1995, she said, and every jury is notified of its sentencing choices for each trial.

The sentence reversal is on appeal now. If the sentence reversal is overturned in the appeals process, Ward will undergo another sentencing.

Ward is still in jail on death row, pending further legal decisions — much to the relief of Linda.

She said she has many names she calls Ward, whom she rarely calls by name, and none of them are suitable for print.

Linda said Nikia, known to her family and friends as “Niki,” was a sweet, caring person.

“She was trusting, and that had a lot to do, I’m sure, (with what happened),” Linda said.

Background

Linda and Nikia had been planning a trip to Florida for Nikia’s daughter, Amber, then almost two years old, to see the beach for the first time before her little brother, Garrett, was born. They had planned to leave for the trip after work on Thursday, Aug. 17, 1989.

But earlier that morning Ward had apparently hidden inside Nikia and her husband’s house in Villanow until her husband, Joe, left for work. Ward kidnapped Nikia using her car.

Joe came home from work to find Amber alone in the home and Nikia’s car missing.

“We knew immediately something was wrong,” Linda said.

Linda contacted her brother-in-law, who was Walker County Superior Court Judge Joe B. Tucker. Search parties were mobilized late that evening. Al Millard, who was the Walker County sheriff at the time, visited the home that night.

They used infrared sensors in helicopters to search a 50-mile radius. But it was a man picking up cans who found her body days later at an illegal dump site — a place where a lot people discarded a lot of garbage, Linda said. The site was located in Walker County, across the mountain on the way from Villanow to LaFayette.

Some of the evidence used in the trial was items taken from Nikia and Joe’s house. In addition to Nikia’s car, a quilted bedspread, a drawer full of Nikia’s underwear, and one part of a bathing suit that Linda bought for Nikia were missing.

Linda explained these are what authorities call “trophies” taken by Ward. She made sure the detectives had photos of these items.

Months later, those photos paid off. A detective recognized the quilted bedspread at Ward’s house. He was there on another case out of Rome. The bedspread had been used to smother a brush fire and had been stuffed into Ward’s truck, where investigators found it.

The detectives also collected a pile of clothing from Ward’s house that Linda was asked to look through to iden-tify anything that might belong to Nikia. She found part of the bathing suit, which she had bought Nikia at Hilton Head.

Linda visited the woman in Rome and learned that Ward had kidnapped her and forced her to perform for him while wearing some of the trophies from previous victims. The woman’s small daughter had also been left at home alone.

In the Rome case, the woman did what she was forced to do and was returned home. Nikia, Tucker said, fought back.

Nikia’s death was caused by asphyxiation — when Ward held her down, with something blocking her airway, ac-cording to court testimony.

Ward met Nikia when he was helping well workers on Joe and Nikia’s 40 acres of farmland. Linda said Nikia even told her family about Ward coming by one day to check on the job, making sure the well was in working order.

Linda said so many aspects about the case were miraculous — the blanket not burning up, Ward taking half of a bathing suit, and the detective recognizing the bedspread.

Linda herself also found Nikia’s car on a dirt road on the way from her home to her daughter’s the morning after she was abducted.

Ward is known to have kidnapped three women and is considered a serial rapist. He also had a list of women whom he stalked.

“We never dreamed anything like this would happen to us,” said Linda, who sits at her parents’ old home in Rocky Face where the décor and furnishings reflect her interior designing business.

Amber, who is now 22 years old, was married on Christmas Eve last year.