MOULTRIE, Ga. — A mass murder suspect on Tuesday stood in a Colquitt County Court as a prosecutor read the 14-count indictment accusing him of five murders, arson and killing three dogs.

Afterwards, Burt Baker, lead attorney for defendant Jeffrey Alan Peacock, entered a not-guilty plea and Peacock signed the indictment document to that effect. Peacock is accused of fatally shooting five acquaintances and then setting their house on fire.

Prior to the brief case activity involved in reading formal charges, Baker, an attorney with the Georgia Capital Defender’s Tifton office, raised an issue about a television reporter accosting his client as he was being led into a hearing last week.

Baker told Superior Court Judge James E. Hardy that a reporter yelled questions at Peacock as he was walking with officers.

Tuesday’s hearing was held in a courtroom at Colquitt County Courthouse Annex instead of the main courtroom in the original courthouse. Police drive defendants there almost right up to a side door into the facility, whereas defendants must walk from the street at the courthouse and into the lobby of the building.

The only time Peacock addressed the court was when Hardy asked whether he was satisfied with his legal team, to which he answered in the affirmative.

Baker also asked the judge to instruct media outlets to inform his office when they make requests to be allowed to use video and still cameras inside a court proceeding.

A Colquitt County Grand Jury indicted Peacock in March on five counts of malice murder and of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Peacock also was indicted on three counts of aggravated cruelty to dogs and arson.

Prosecutors say that Peacock shot Jonathan Garrett Edwards, Ramsey Jones Pidcock and Aaron Reid Williams, all 21; 20-year-old Alicia Brooke Norman; and Jordan Shane Croft, 22. The five were shot in the head at their 505 Rossman Dairy Road residence before the wood-frame house was set ablaze.

Peacock reportedly was one of three callers who notified Colquitt County E-911 on the morning of May 15, 2016, according to E-911 call logs.

Initial sheriff’s reports said that when a deputy arrived at the burning wood-frame house, located about five miles northeast of Moultrie, Peacock was at the scene. He told officers at that time that he had gone to get breakfast for his five friends living at the house and saw the smoke as he was returning.

Investigators immediately were suspicious that five healthy young adults would succumb to fire, and have said that an autopsy showed no smoke in their lungs — meaning they were dead before the fire started.

According to indictments in the case, all five were shot in the head before the house was set on fire.

Two dogs also died inside the residence of burns and smoke inhalation, according to police, and the body of a third dog with a fractured head was found outside the house.

Peacock remains incarcerated at Colquitt County Jail. A $1 million bond was set, but the public defender who represented Peacock in that hearing told the judge that he couldn’t afford even a quarter of that amount and suggested a figure of $100,000.