Former District Attorney Jackie Johnson speaks at the Glynn County Courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia, last month. She will go on trial Monday for interfering with the police investigation into the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, the black jogger chased and killed by three white men in February 2020. No arrests were made until months later, and only after the video of the crime was released. .
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Michael Hall/Pool photo via AP
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — It’s been nearly five years since Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed in Satilla Shores, a subdivision in coastal Georgia.
Neighbors Greg McMichael, his son Travis and William “Roddie” Bryan wrongly assumed Arbery was a thief and chased him with pickup trucks.
“There’s a black man running down the street,” the elder McMichael told a 911 dispatcher, shouting “Stop there, dammit!” moments before Travis McMichael shot Arbery three times at point-blank range with a shotgun.
The men are all serving life sentences for murder, kidnapping and a hate crime.
Now, another piece of this high-profile racial justice case will go to court Monday after years of legal delays.
Former Brunswick Judicial District Attorney Jackie Johnson is accused of violating her oath of office and obstructing a police officer. State prosecutors say she sought to protect the McMichaels from arrest. Greg McMichael had previously worked as an investigator in his office and was a former police officer.
Arbery’s family is ready to see this corruption case go to trial.
“To get 100 percent justice for Ahmaud,” says his father, Marcus Arbery.
He says holding the former prosecutor accountable is no less important than convicting the murderers, because elected officials are supposed to serve everyone equally.
People take part in a protest in Atlanta following the guilty verdicts in the trial of Ahmaud Arbery’s killers, November 24, 2021. Greg McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, were convicted guilty in February 2020 fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, 25, in Brunswick, Georgia.
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Megan Varner/Getty Images
“We put our lives in their hands,” he said. “You get a powerful point like that and you don’t do the work? It’s hurtful.”
Ex-DA denies wrongdoing
Johnson, who is white, had been a local prosecutor for 10 years. She denied any interference and said she immediately recused herself from the Arbery case.
His lawyer declined NPR’s request for an interview. But in May 2020, she was asked on a local radio show about allegations that she advised police not to arrest the McMichaels.
“It’s so far from the truth, it’s just an outright lie,” Johnson said on WIFO’s Butch and Bob.
“We were not trying to do anything to manipulate this matter. Rather, we were trying to stay out of this matter,” she said at the time.
Johnson speculated that Glynn County police were accusing him of intervening in retaliation for his office’s investigation into police corruption.
Some of the evidence the Georgia attorney general’s office is expected to present at Johnson’s trial includes logs of some 16 calls between phones belonging to Greg McMichael and Johnson in the days and weeks after Arbery’s killing. A message was also left on his cell phone shortly after the shooting.
“Jackie, this is Greg. Could you call me as soon as possible?” he said. “My son and I were involved in a shooting and I need advice immediately.”
Community outrage over how murder was handled
State prosecutors should also question whether Johnson followed proper protocol when she asked a prosecutor from a neighboring jurisdiction to act as Glynn County police counsel in the Arbery case, before notifying the state attorney general’s office. That prosecutor’s son worked in Johnson’s office.
Community activists criticized how Glynn County officials initially handled the case. Arbery was shot and killed on February 23, but nothing happened until a graphic cellphone video of the killing, recorded by Bryan, was leaked on May 5.
Wanda Cooper-Jones, mother of Ahmaud Arbery, leaves the Glynn County Courthouse as jury deliberations began in the trial of her son’s killers on November 23, 2021 in Brunswick, Georgia.
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The video sparked public outrage and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from Glynn County police. Under increasing pressure, the McMichaels and Bryan were arrested shortly thereafter.
In Brunswick, the nearly three-month delay in seeking justice for Arbery sparked a grassroots movement aimed at transforming the community.
“We realized it wasn’t enough to shed light on his case,” says Elijah Bobby Henderson, co-founder of A Better Glynn, a civic engagement coalition formed after Arbery’s murder.
The group set out to increase voter turnout and worked to ensure that Jackie Johnson was defeated in her re-election as DA. They also successfully pressured the Georgia legislature to repeal the citizen’s arrest law and pass new hate crime legislation.
But Henderson says they have bigger goals that will take time.
“We want better systems; we want better results,” he says. “Making improvements to the systems that failed that day and continue to fail in Glynn County.”
Henderson says he hopes evidence from this trial can shed light on the local power structure.
“I call it a cabal. We know there are handshake deals and behind-the-scenes conversations. But it was bad,” Henderson says.
This photo combination shows, from left, Travis McMichael, William “Roddie” Bryan and Gregory McMichael during their trial at the Glynn County Courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia.
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“If a Sunday jogger can be killed and they intend to cover it up, we are back to where people are lynched without justice.”
Arbery’s killing was among those that sparked a national outcry over racial justice in 2020.
Barbara Arnwine of the Transformative Justice Coalition says if the allegations against the former prosecutor are proven in court, it will highlight inequities in the criminal justice system.
“Those vigilantes who took the law into their own hands were bad enough,” she says. “But having the help of a prosecutor after the fact is very painful.”
Arnwine says the trial is an opportunity for transparency about what exactly happened in those early weeks when the family feared there would be no justice for their son’s murder.
“It was very hard,” she said. “Those weeks where the family didn’t see an active investigation but were told the best was being done when that wasn’t the case.”
The Georgia Attorney General’s Office will prosecute Johnson’s case, with jury selection set to begin Monday.
