GLYNN COUNTY, Ga. – With an early 2025 trial date looming, attorneys for a former Georgia district attorney charged with interfering in the Ahmaud Arbery murder investigation are asking a judge to disqualify the Attorney General’s Office from prosecuting the case.
In a final pretrial hearing Wednesday in front of Senior Judge John R. Turner, Jackie Johnson‘s lead defense attorney Brian Steel argued that Republican AG Christopher Carr and his office should be disqualified from prosecuting Johnson because the indictment accuses Johnson of withholding information from Carr’s office in 2020.
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In a case that later received national attention, Arbery, 25, was fatally shot on Feb. 23, 2020, on a residential street as he ran from three white men chasing him in pickup trucks.
According to her indictment, shortly after the deadly shooting, Johnson told police they shouldn’t arrest Travis McMichael, the man who pulled the trigger.
McMichael’s father, Greg, who initiated the deadly pursuit, was Johnson’s former employee in the prosecutor’s office, and Johnson is accused of illegally using her office to try to protect the retired investigator and his son.
The indictment also accuses Johnson 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.
AG Carr appointed Barnhill four days later to take over as outside prosecutor.
Carr has said he appointed Barnhill to take over the case without knowing that Johnson had already called on him to advise the police.
Barnhill stepped aside after a few weeks, but not before he sent a letter to the police captain, arguing the McMichaels acted legally and Arbery was killed in self-defense.
Steel said the indictment’s wording makes Carr’s office a victim in the Johnson case, and its employees key witnesses.
“I don’t believe it is within the law to allow a prosecutor, or any lawyer, to be a witness — a material witness — in a case” that they are trying, Steel said.
Prosecutor John Fowler said people in the attorney general’s office who dealt directly with Johnson in Arbery’s case no longer work there. Fowler accused Steel of trying to steer Johnson’s case into a “gray legal limbo” where no one would prosecute her.
“They’re trying to get this case into a place where it cannot move forward,” Fowler said.
Steel argued that if the AG’s Office is disqualified, the governor can appoint a prosecutor for the case.
There was no immediate ruling from Judge Turner.
Johnson makes 1st appearance
Jury selection in Johnson’s criminal misconduct trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 21 in Glynn County. Attorneys on both sides told the judge Wednesday that they expected the case to take about 2 1/2 weeks.
“I think because of the sensitivity of the case and the notoriety of the case, it may take longer,” Turner said.
Johnson has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.
She made her first appearance in court Wednesday, more than three years after she was indicted by a grand jury.
Johnson spent a decade as the state’s top prosecutor for the coastal Brunswick Judicial Circuit but came to court Wednesday as a defendant, charged with violating her oath of office and hindering police as they investigated Arbery’s death.
Along with the McMichaels, a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the pursuit and recorded graphic cellphone video of the shooting.
Arbery’s pursuers argued that they mistakenly believed the 25-year-old Black man was a criminal and that he was shot in self-defense.
Barnhill sided with them and initially, no arrests were made in the case.
But after Bryan’s video leaked online more than two months after the shooting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police and the men were charged.
All three were later convicted of murder and federal hate crimes.
While the men responsible for Arbery’s death are serving life sentences in prison, his family has insisted that justice won’t be complete for them until Johnson stands trial.
“It’s very, very important,” Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother, told the AP in September.
Johnson has said she immediately recused her office from handling the case.
During the pretrial hearing on Wednesday, Steel said he plans to present evidence during Johnson’s trial next month that she was focused on seeking a high-profile indictment against a police chief when Arbery was killed.
“She didn’t know what was going on with Ahmaud Arbery’s case,” Steel said.
But prosecutors have said in court filings there were 16 calls between phone numbers for Johnson and Greg McMichael in the days and weeks after the shooting. Greg McMichael left Johnson a voice message the day Arbery was killed.
Despite denying wrongdoing, Johnson was voted out of office months later amid outrage over Arbery’s killing.
Case at a crawl
Johnson’s case sat dormant while Steel spent nearly two years in an Atlanta courtroom defending Grammy-winning rapper Young Thug in a sprawling racketeering and gang case.
Turner’s scheduling order moving ahead with Johnson’s case came less than a week after Young Thug pleaded guilty to gang, drug and gun charges.
That order in early November was the first action taken since a year earlier when Turner denied legal motions by Johnson’s lawyers to dismiss the case.
Her attorneys offered more information related to those motions during Wednesday’s hearing, and Turner said he would reconsider the motion.
Turner also heard legal motions from both sides seeking to limit what information a jury is allowed to hear. Prosecutors want Johnson’s past electoral successes and high-profile prosecutions declared off-limits. Johnson’s lawyers want other cases in which she called for an outside prosecutor kept out of her trial.
Turner said he will likely rule on all the motions in the healing sometime next week.