The indictment charging former coastal Georgia District Attorney Jackie Johnson with violating her oath of office in the wake of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder was invalid, the presiding judge ruled Wednesday before dismissing her one remaining charge.
Johnson was indicted by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office in 2021 on charges she violated her oath and hindered the police investigation into Ahmaud Arbery’s 2020 murder.
But the prosecution’s case floundered from the start, and Senior Judge John R. Turner took the rare step of dismissing Johnson’s misdemeanor obstruction charge Monday, saying he hadn’t seen “one scintilla of evidence” the former DA instructed police not to arrest Arbery’s killers.
Johnson’s attorney, Brian Steel, had challenged the validity of his client’s remaining violation of oath of office charge, which was predicated on an oath Johnson took in 2010 after being appointed by then- Gov. Sonny Perdue.
Steel said the indictment brought by Carr’s office more than three years ago was deficient because that oath was not in effect at the time of Arbery’s murder. In fact, Johnson had taken two other oaths since then after winning reelection bids in 2012 and 2016.
From the bench, the judge expressed sympathy for Ahmaud Arbery’s family members seated in the courtroom.
“In listening to the testimony here I will never understand why these people were never arrested,” Turner said of Arbery’s killers.
He said he recently lost a close friend from high school and was “devastated” by the news. But he said “nothing compares to what the Arbery family must have gone through,” after losing their son.
Arbery’s parents seemed disappointed as they exited the courtroom, but his mother said in the hallway that she understood the judge’s rationale.
“The law is the law,” Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper Jones said before leaving the courthouse. “But this was a win for us, because we got to find out what really went on.”
—Please return to AJC.com for updates.
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