Neighboring DA says he planned to take Ahmaud Arbery shooting to grand jury

“She didn’t want to handle it because it was her ex-employee,” Barnhill testified. “This was his son and she thought it would look inappropriate if she handled it.”

Barnhill said he couldn’t quote Johnson verbatim, but he recalled her saying something to the effect of, “we can’t touch this.”

He said he was surprised to learn that none of the men responsible for Arbery’s death were in custody when he and an assistant arrived at Glynn County police headquarters for the Feb. 24, 2020, meeting.

By the end of that meeting, Barnhill said police had shown him cellphone footage of Arbery’s killing and persuaded him that the Black man’s shooting was justified.

“She showed a video about how the Arbery guy was hitting him in the head with one hand while holding the shotgun with the other,” Barnhill testified.

He was referring to the viral video of Arbery tussling with Travis McMichael in the road after McMichael, his father and a neighbor chased him through their subdivision for nearly five minutes.

Still, Barnhill told Deputy Attorney General John Fowler he instructed Glynn County police to complete their investigation and get him their case file quickly so he could present the evidence to a grand jury.

“You’re gonna need to make a full report just like any other murder case and you’re gonna need to get that to us and it’s gonna go to a grand jury,” Barnhill recalled saying.

In his deep Southern drawl, Barnhill discussed how he reluctantly agreed to meet with police the previous afternoon after getting a phone call from Johnson.

Johnson, he said, informed him that she was recusing herself from the case after learning the shooting involved Greg McMichael, a former investigator in her office. The local police department had questions, she told him, and needed some legal advice, according to testimony.

He was adamant that Jackie Johnson never told him what to say to the police.

“You weren’t acting as some covert agent for Jackie Johnson, right?” defense attorney Keith Adams asked him on the stand.

“No,” Barnhill replied.

Barnhill said he thought he was there to provide legal advice, but indicated that the police had already made up their minds by the time he arrived.

This was not one of those (cases) where we got in there and they were asking us,” he said. “They didn’t ask us for any warrants, any search warrant help. It was more like, ‘and this is why we think it was self-defense.’”

In some ways, his testimony contradicted what assistant Glynn County police Chief Stephanie Oliver said on the stand a day earlier.

She testified Thursday that authorities were essentially waiting on the neighboring DA to tell them whether an arrest was warranted.

Barnhill advised “that there weren’t any laws broken,” Oliver said on the stand, “that it was justified.”

Johnson’s indictment accused her of instructing Oliver and another Glynn County police officer not to arrest Travis McMichael, but Oliver said that never happened.

The day of the shooting, Glynn County police agreed to release the three men who pursued Arbery and blocked him in with their vehicles before he was killed in the Satilla shores neighborhood.

“They had made the decision not to arrest the night before,” Barnhill said. “Now who or how or why or who was involved in that, I have no idea.”

Johnson’s case is being tried by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office, which has accused her of violating her oath of office and hindering the investigation into Arbery’s killing.

The McMichaels were convicted of murder and other charges in 2021, along with their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, who joined in the chase and filmed the deadly shooting. All three were convicted of federal hate crimes in a separate trial the following year after prosecutors successfully argued the men targeted Arbery because of his race.

Credit: Associated Press

Credit: Associated Press

Barnhill said he eventually decided to recuse himself from the case amid widespread unrest both locally and nationally over law enforcement’s decision not making any arrests in the case.

His son, George F. Barnhill, said he and his family received numerous threats as the details of Arbery’s killing slowly became public. At the time, the younger Barnhill was an assistant district attorney in Johnson’s office.

Given their similar names, many mistook the younger Barnhill for his father. Before long, pictures of his wife and young children were circulated on the internet.

Calls also began flooding the local district attorney’s office, he said.

“It got so bad at one point that we had to tell some of the younger staff to stop answering phones,” he said. “They were called the most vile, horrible things. That we were racist, that we were all going to burn in hell.”

The younger Barnhill said he called Johnson about the threats and asked what he should do. Police increased patrols at his home and installed a surveillance camera in his yard, he said. Eventually, he persuaded his wife to take their young children and go stay at her mother’s house in Brantley County, he said.

Eventually, the elder Barnhill notified the attorney general’s office that they would need to find somebody else to handle the case, George F. Barnhill said. He recalled a conversation he had with his dad about that decision.

“Dad said, ‘we’re getting off of this. This is crazy and it’s not worth this,’” he testified.

Johnson’s trial is set to resume Monday morning.