BRUNSWICK, Georgia. – On Wednesday, a judge dismissed a criminal charge against a former prosecutor in Georgia. This decision ended her trial for allegedly misusing her power to protect the men who pursued and killed Ahmaud Arbery in 2020.
Former District Attorney Jackie Johnson repeatedly claimed she did not affect the police’s decision not to arrest anyone after Arbery was shot and killed in Glynn County, where she was the leading prosecutor at the time.
She was charged in September 2021 after the state’s Attorney General, Chris Carr, started looking into possible wrongdoing by Johnson. Prosecutors from Carr’s office faced challenges in building their case when Johnson’s trial started last week.
On Monday, Senior Judge John R. Turner ordered that Johnson be found not guilty of a minor charge of obstructing police. Turner decided after the prosecutors finished their arguments that they did not provide any proof showing that Johnson had told police not to arrest the man who shot Arbery.
On Wednesday, the judge dropped the last charge, a crime claim that Johnson broke her oath of office. This time, he accepted a defense argument that the charges against Johnson were seriously flawed due to technical mistakes.
“Honestly, I didn’t want to make this decision,” Turner said to the lawyers in the courtroom. He said that the defense’s request to throw out the charges against Johnson should be accepted.
The judge showed compassion for Arbery’s mother while she was in the courtroom.
Turner said, “I feel very sad when I think about this situation.”
Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, left the courtroom and said she didn’t blame the prosecutors for dropping the case.
Cooper-Jones said to reporters, “The proof was clear.” “Everyone knows that Jackie Johnson was involved in hiding the truth about Ahmaud’s death.”
Defense lawyers for Last week, Johnson asked the judge to throw out the charges against him. Turner postponed the decision until Wednesday morning.
The judge didn’t explain his reasons. Defense lawyers claimed that the charge against Johnson for breaking her oath of office had a serious mistake: it referred to the oath she signed when she became district attorney in 2010, taking over for her predecessor.
Defense lawyers argued that Johnson’s previous oath ended when he took a new one after winning the election in 2012. She took it again after she was returned in 2016.
Witnesses at the trial included former district attorneys who swore they take a new oath after each four-year election cycle, voiding any prior oaths.
Prosecutor John Fowler did not talk to reporters and told them to ask the attorney general’s office instead. A representative for Carr did not reply right away to an email asking for comments.
Three white guys chased Arbery in their neighborhood before they shot him and he died. They were found guilty of killings and hate crimes later on.
Greg and Travis McMichael, a father and son, took guns and followed a 25-year-old Black man named Arbery in their pickup truck after seeing him running in their Georgia neighborhood on February 23, 2020. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan joined the chase in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery at close range with a shotgun.
The men told the cops they thought Arbery was a thief and claimed they shot him in self-defense. No one was arrested for over two months, until a cellphone video of the killing was shared online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took control of the case from local police.
Since Johnson’s trial started a week ago, prosecutors have been trying to show that she secretly helped Travis McMichael and his father, who is a retired detective from Johnson’s office, even after the district attorney had removed her office from the case.
Prosecutors faced a problem last week when Glynn County Assistant Police Chief Stephanie Oliver said she and Johnson have never talked about Arbery’s case. Oliver was one of two officers named in the 2021 indictment charging Johnson with obstruction by “directing that Travis McMichael should not be placed under arrest.”
On Monday, prosecutors finished presenting their case without having Stephan Lowrey, the second officer mentioned in the indictment, appear.
Johnson removed her office from dealing with Arbery’s killing case. Prosecutors claimed that Johnson misused her position by suggesting that the attorney general select George Barnhill, a nearby district attorney, to handle the case. They pointed out that she did not mention that Barnhill had already told the police that the shooting was justified.
Barnhill said on Friday that he gave advice to the cops on his own, without any help from Johnson.
Johnson lost her job in November 2020 and mostly blamed her loss on the debate surrounding Arbery’s killing a few months before.
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