BRUNSWICK — Former District Attorney Jackie Johnson spent much of her career prosecuting criminal cases at the Glynn County courthouse. Now she finds herself as a defendant inside one of the very courtrooms where she once worked.
But Johnson’s defense attorney told a jury Tuesday that his client in no way hindered the investigation into Ahmaud Arbery’s 2020 murder. In fact, Brian Steel said in his opening statement, Johnson decided to recuse herself after learning that Arbery had been shot to death by the son of her former chief investigator.
And he said Johnson was horrified 73 days later when she first watched the viral cellphone video of the 25-year-old’s “slaughter.”
“Ahmaud Arbery should be alive,” Steel told the jury. But “his life, his murder, his memory cannot be tarnished with untruths.”
Credit: Terry Dickson/ The Brunswick News
Credit: Terry Dickson/ The Brunswick News
Deputy Attorney General John Fowler painted a competing version of events.
An hour after Greg McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan chased after Arbery, “pinned him in like an animal and worked together to shoot him multiple times with a shotgun,” the elder McMichael called his former boss and left a voicemail asking for her help, Fowler told the jury.
It would be the first in a string of calls between Greg McMichael and Johnson, who had been “the chief law enforcement officer and chief prosecutor of this county.”
“Immediately, everybody knew there was a conflict of interest,” Fowler said Tuesday.
That afternoon, Jackie Johnson called George E. Barnhill, the former district attorney of the neighboring Waycross Judicial Circuit.
“I have an emergency,” Johnson told him, according to Fowler. “I need you to come look at this case.”
The next morning, Barnhill and an assistant went to Glynn County at Johnson’s behest, where they spoke with Glynn County police and watched the cellphone video of Arbery getting chased by three white men in pickup trucks and shot to death in the street.
Barnhill concluded after meeting with police that it was a justified shooting and that no criminal charges were necessary, Fowler said. The problem, he told jurors, is that Barnhill made up his mind before he was formally assigned to the case.
Ahmaud Arbery’s mother, meanwhile, was left in the dark, Fowler said. She had been told by Glynn County police that her son was killed “in a home invasion gone wrong.”
The police department’s version of events never sat well with Arbery’s mother, and it would be more than two months before Wanda Cooper Jones learned the truth.
“This is a case about victims’ rights,” said Fowler who accused Johnson of putting the “interest of her former chief investigator ahead of the victim.
The McMichaels were convicted of murder in 2021, along with Bryan, who joined in the chase and filmed the deadly shooting. All three were convicted of hate crime charges in a second trial held the following year after federal prosecutors successfully argued the men targeted Arbery because of his race.
Credit: Associated Press
Credit: Associated Press
Johnson, 52, spent a decade as DA of the five-county Brunswick Judicial Circuit. She is accused of instructing two Glynn County police officers not to arrest Travis McMichael, though it’s unclear when she allegedly did that.
The indictment brought by the AG’s office also accuses her of showing “favor and affection” toward his father.
Steel provided the jury with what he said was a step-by-step description of events leading up to Johnson turning over Greg McMichael’s voicemails to GBI investigators before they arrested all three men in May 2020.
Steel said the graphic video of Arbery’s murder speaks for itself. But he said his client has waited nearly five years to clear her name.
“It had nothing to do with Jackie,” he said.
The jury tasked with deciding Johnson’s fate was seated Tuesday morning, hours before opening statements began. Of the 12 trial jurors selected, nine are women and three are men. They include two teachers, a pharmacist, a supermarket manager, a contractor and several retirees. Ten of the trial jurors are white, one is Asian American and one is Black.
Steel challenged the prosecution’s use of eight of its nine peremptory strikes to remove men from the final jury pool. Fowler, the lead prosecutor on the case, said he had valid reasons for each of those jury strikes and explained what they were.
Credit: Terry Dickson/The Brunswick News
Credit: Terry Dickson/The Brunswick News
For example, Fowler said he struck one of the prospective male jurors because he and his wife work in the federal prison system. Another wants to become a police officer, and a third juror is married to a Glynn County court clerk. Fowler raised concerns the clerk and her husband could have a “closeness to the longtime politics of the county.”
Another man in the jury pool went to school with one of the men convicted of Arbery’s murder, Fowler said.
Senior Judge John R. Turner agreed with Fowler’s “gender-neutral” reasons and allowed the panel of mostly women to remain intact.
The case is expected to last about two weeks but could take a little longer, Turner said.
Johnson is charged with violating her oath of office — a felony — and obstruction of law enforcement, which is a misdemeanor. She faces a sentence of up to six years if convicted of both counts.
Testimony is expected to begin Wednesday morning.
