Jackie Johnson. | Source: Glynn County Sheriff’s Office
Most of the jurors selected to serve on a Georgia trial in which a former district attorney is accused of covering up a racist vigilante murder of a young Black man are white, according to a new report.
Conversely, just one Black person was picked to help decide the fate of Jackie Johnson, who allegedly protected the killers of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black jogger who was racially profiled and fatally stalked by three white men nearly five years ago.
MORE: Here Are The Folks Who Could Still Be Held Accountable In The Death Of Ahmaud Arbery
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also reported that nine of the jurors are women.
Johnson made her first court appearance in the case last month.
During the pretrial hearing, defense attorney Brian Steel – who also recently represented popular rapper Young Thug in a sweeping RICO case in Fulton County – claimed Jackie Johnson “Didn’t know what was going on with Ahmaud Arbery’s case” because she was focused on trying to indict a high-profile police chief at the time of the murder.
What is Jackie Johnson charged with?
The trial for Johnson, the former district attorney in Glynn County, is finally getting underway after being delayed for years following her indictment in 2021 on one felony count of violating her oath of office and one misdemeanor count of hindering a law enforcement officer.
The former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney employed Greg McMichael — who, along with his son, Travis, was convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery — as an investigator in her office until he retired in 2019. Greg McMichael called Johnson shortly after shooting Arbery on Feb. 23, 2020, more than two months before anyone was arrested for the killing.
“Jackie, this is Greg,” Greg McMichael said, according to a recording of the call included in the public case file. “Could you call me as soon as you possibly can? My son and I have been involved in a shooting and I need some advice right away.”
According to the indictment, Johnson returned the call and not only did she show “favor and affection” toward Greg McMichael, but she interfered with police officers at the scene by “directing that Travis McMichael should not be placed under arrest.”
Prosecutors listed a total of 16 calls between Greg McMichael and Johnson that allegedly occurred in the days and weeks following the shooting, according to the Associated Press.
Johnson was charged in September of 2021 after Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr requested an investigation that revealed the previously undisclosed relationship with Greg McMichael. The investigation also showed that Johnson was part of an incestuous web of local law enforcement plotting with the people directly involved in Ahmaud Arbery’s murder to help cover it up.
Despite the indictment, Johnson remains an attorney in good standing, according to the State Bar of Georgia.
Other Georgia DAs are implicated
Carr didn’t only call for an investigation into Johnson’s conduct. He also had investigators look into that of Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill, who Johnson called in to handle police questions about how to handle the Arbery case, to which he falsely determined “that he did not see grounds for the arrest of any of the individuals involved in Mr. Arbery’s death.”
Barnhill—who later recused himself from the case after Arbery’s family found out his son once worked for Johnson as an assistant prosecutor—wrote a letter to a Glynn County police captain saying the McMichaels “were following, in ‘hot pursuit,’ a burglary suspect, with solid first-hand probable cause, in their neighborhood, and asking/ telling him to stop.”
“It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived. Under Georgia Law this is perfectly legal,” Barnhill continued. The citizen’s arrest law that he said made it “perfectly legal” has since been repealed.
Barnhill has not been indicted, but Carr has said his office would “continue to investigate in order to pursue justice.”
Justice For Ahmaud Arbery
In 2021, nearly two years after Ahmaud Arbery’s shocking killing in Brunswick, Georgia, a jury has found the three men responsible for his death guilty of felony murder.
Father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael and their friend William “Roddie” Bryan were all shown on video actively participating in Arbery’s killing in the middle of a street in broad daylight. The verdict was effectively a referendum and accountability for the racist and vigilante shooting that bore all the hallmarks of a modern-day lynching.
The defendants’ respective lawyers were unable to get jurors to believe a far-fetched premise that relies on an archaic citizen’s arrest law rooted in slavery that has since been repealed.
In that case, the jury’s racial makeup was similar to the one chosen for Johnson. The trial’s start got underway just one day after a decidedly non-diverse jury was set in a case that centers on race.
Johnson’s trial is expected to take about two weeks.
SEE ALSO:
Ahmaud Arbery’s Convicted Killers Desperately Seek New Trial For Lynching Unarmed Black Jogger
Hate Crime Convictions Of Ahmaud Arbery’s Killers Bring Closure, Not Justice, Civil Rights Leaders Say
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