SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — 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.”
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