SAVANNAH, Ga. — Three years after a former Georgia district attorney was indicted on charges alleging she interfered with police investigating the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the case's slow progression through the court system has sputtered to a halt, one the presiding judge insists is temporary.
Jackie Johnson was the state's top prosecutor for coastal Glynn County in February 2020, when Arbery was chased by three white men in pickup trucks who had spotted him running in their neighborhood. The 25-year-old Black man died in the street after one of his pursuers shot him with a shotgun.
Johnson transferred the case to an outside prosecutor because the man who initiated the deadly chase, Greg McMichael, was her former employee. But Georgia's attorney general says she illegally used her office to try to protect the retired investigator and his son, Travis McMichael, who fired the fatal shots.
Both McMichaels already have been convicted and sentenced to prison in back-to-back trials for murder and federal hate crimes. So has a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, whose cellphone video of the shooting triggered a national outcry over Arbery’s death. A court heard their first appeals six months ago.
The criminal misconduct case against Johnson has moved at a comparative crawl since a grand jury indicted her on Sept. 2, 2021, on a felony count of violating her oath of office and a misdemeanor count of hindering a police officer.
While the men responsible for Arbery's death are serving life sentences, the slain man's family has insisted that justice won’t be complete until Johnson stands trial.
“It’s very, very important,” said Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery's mother. “Jackie Johnson was really part of the problem early on.”
Johnson has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing. After losing reelection in 2020, she told The Associated Press that she immediately recused herself in the handling of Arbery's killing because of Greg McMichael's involvement.
Johnson's case has stalled as one of her attorneys, Brian Steel, has spent most of the past two years in an Atlanta courtroom defending Grammy-winning rapper Young Thug against racketeering and gang charges. Jury selection in the case took 10 months, prosecutors began presenting evidence last November and they are still calling witnesses.
Senior Judge John R. Turner, who was assigned to Johnson’s case, insists there is nothing he can do but wait.
“If anyone’s concerned that the case is being shuffled under the rug, I can guarantee you it’s not,” Turner told the AP in a phone interview. “It’s moving at a snail’s pace, but it will move forward eventually.”
After Arbery was killed, Greg McMichael told police that he and his son had armed themselves and chased the Black man, suspecting he was a fleeing criminal. Bryan, who didn't know any of the men, made a similar assumption after seeing them pass his home and joined in his own truck.
The indictment against Johnson alleges she told police they shouldn't arrest Travis McMichael. It also accuses her of “showing favor and affection” to Greg McMichael by calling on George Barnhill, a district attorney in a neighboring judicial circuit, to advise police about how to handle the shooting.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr appointed Barnhill four days later to take over as outside prosecutor. Carr has said he picked Barnhill without knowing he already had advised police that he saw no grounds for arrests in Arbery's death.
Barnhill stepped aside after a few weeks, but not before he sent a letter to police captain arguing the McMichaels acted legally and Arbery was killed in self-defense.
After Johnson was charged, she reported to jail for booking and was released without having to post bond. Her attorneys waived a formal reading of the charges before a judge and she has yet to appear in court. The judge denied legal motions by Johnson’s lawyers to dismiss the case last November. Court records show no further developments over the past 10 months.
“Securing an indictment is just one step in our ongoing pursuit of justice for Ahmaud Arbery and his family," Carr said in a statement. "We have never stopped fighting for them, and we look forward to the opportunity to present our case in court.”
Johnson's attorneys, Steel and John Ossick, did not respond to emails and a phone message seeking comment. They have argued in court filings there is “not a scintilla of evidence” that she hindered police.
Prosecutors responded with a court filing that listed 16 calls between phones belonging to Johnson and Greg McMichael in the weeks following the shooting.
Two legal experts who aren't involved in the case said there is no deadline for Johnson to stand trial. She hasn't been jailed, so there is little pressure to expedite her case.
Steel's prolonged absence because of the Atlanta gang trial likely isn't the only factor slowing the case, Atlanta defense attorney Don Samuel said.
Courts remain saddled with a backlog of cases since the COVID-19 lockdowns, he said. And the attorney general's office has a limited staff of criminal prosecutors with their own busy caseloads.
Samuel also questioned whether prosecutors have a strong case against Johnson. Even if she opposed charging the McMichaels in Arbery's death, he said, prosecutors haven't accused her of taking bribes or similar blatant corruption.
District attorneys “have a huge amount of discretion to make decisions about what cases to pursue,” Samuel said. “The notion that we’re going to start prosecuting DAs for prosecuting or not prosecuting strikes me as really being on the edge of propriety.”
Danny Porter, the former district attorney for Gwinnett County in metro Atlanta, said prosecutors like Johnson have a legitimate role in advising police on whether or not to arrest suspects before an investigation is complete.
As for Johnson's recommendation in 2020 that the attorney general replace her with another prosecutor who concluded Arbery's killing was justified, Porter said: “I don’t think that’s a violation of the law, though it might have made them mad.”
