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.
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.
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.
I remember this. Some racist rednecks chased a Black man in their trucks and recorded it on a phone. Morons.
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.
Asshole DA trying to protect a hate crime-committing racist POS.
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.
Ten months for selecting a jury? How?! People with money need to be held to account without letting them gum up the wheels of justice for regular folks. But some guy with a bunch of money can make a process that should take days take almost a year.
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.
Oh, well that sounds fine, not at all like some Ole’ Boys of the South protecting murderers.
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.”
You’re leaving out the part where she knew one of the murderers, asshole.
