There is a new criminal defendant in the Ahmaud Arbery case. The trial judge handed down an important ruling. And a pretrial hearing exposed some of the pressure points that will be argued at the trial.
Those are some of developments examined in the latest episode of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s ‘Breakdown’ podcast. In Season 8, the AJC is reporting on the fatal shooting of Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old Black man, just outside of coastal Brunswick.
Three men, all of whom are white, are charged with murder and other offenses: Travis McMichael, who fired the fatal gunshot blasts; his father, Greg McMichael, a former police officer and investigator for the local District Attorney’s Office; and William “Roddie” Bryan, a neighbor.
In this season’s 11th episode, Breakdown explores the recent indictment of former District Attorney Jackie Johnson. She was charged with obstructing a police officer and violating her oath of office in the immediate aftermath of Arbery’s killing.
Arbery’s parents and their civil rights attorneys praise the work by a Glynn County grand jury and the state Attorney General’s Office, which obtained the indictment. But some attorneys are critical of the charges brought against Johnson, who was voted out of office last November largely for the way she handled the Arbery investigation.
The latest episode also notes that Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley, who is presiding over the case, handed the prosecution a big victory in a highly anticipated ruling. The episode also covers an important pretrial hearing in which defense attorneys initially sought to bar the news media from an important part of jury selection at trial.
Walmsley recently met with lawyers in the case and, despite concerns about a surge of COVID-19 cases in Glynn County, decided the murder trial for the McMichaels and Bryan will proceed as scheduled on Oct. 18.
