The public is finally learning specifics about former Brunswick-area district attorney Jackie Johnson’s decisions in the wake of Ahmaud Arbery’s death nearly five years ago. Arguments began in Johnson’s criminal trial on Tuesday.
In opening arguments, the Georgia Attorney General’s office and Johnson’s criminal defense lawyers presented vastly different accounts of what Johnson knew and how she acted and reacted after learning that Arbery, a young Black man from Brunswick, was chased and killed by three white men, one of whom was Johnson’s longtime former employee.
Johnson is on trial for violating her oath of office and hindering a police investigation. She has pleaded not guilty.
To John Fowler, deputy attorney general under AG Chris Carr, Johnson knew there was a clear conflict of interest after Arbery’s death and worked behind the scenes to protect her former chief investigator, Gregory McMichael. She did so at the expense of Wanda Cooper Jones, Arbery’s mother, who testified that for weeks she was incorrectly under the impression that Arbery was killed by a homeowner while committing a burglary.
“This is a case about victim’s rights,” Fowler said. He later said, “Ms. Johnson put the interest of her chief investigator over a crime victim.”
But Brian Steel, the Atlanta-based attorney for Johnson, said his client was deceived just like Arbery’s mother — a striking new admission in the highly publicized case involving the former district attorney. The video of Arbery’s killing, which Glynn County Police detectives were in possession of since the day of the murder, went viral in early May 2020 and one of the millions of first-time viewers included Johnson, according to Steel.
“That is the first time she ever saw it. She says, ‘This is a murder!’” Steel said, “How are they not arrested?”
According to Steel, the failures fell upon the Glynn County Police Department, as well as Waycross-area district attorney George E. Barnhill, who let McMichael, his son Travis, and neighbor William Bryan go unarrested after Arbery’s killing on Feb. 23, 2020. They were not considered suspects.
On Wednesday, Fowler proffered three witnesses, a Glynn County Police officer, Cooper Jones, and the head of Georgia Prosecuting Attorneys Council.
He is seeking to advance the theory that Johnson selected a friendly district attorney to take on the conflict-of-interest case and guide the outcome to protect McMichael.
Fowler said she got DA Barnhill to take the case, make a decision on the McMichaels’ innocence and then stepped away from the case as prosecutor to keep her fingerprints off of it. Steel countered that the selection of Barnhill was made by Carr’s office, not her.
Arbery’s mother takes the stand
Johnson violated her oath of office as a prosecutor, according to Fowler, by not advocating for crime victims like Cooper Jones. Georgia prosecutors are required by law to advocate on behalf of crime victims.
Cooper Jones, with short hair and a poised demeanor, testified in a third criminal case in two years about her son’s death. She said nobody from Johnson’s or Barnhill’s offices contacted her after her son’s death.
“At that point I was just losing hope,” Cooper Jones testified. “I lost my son. My whole life had just changed. I wasn’t able to return back to work in the mental state I was in, and most importantly, I didn’t know what happened to my baby.”
She had to make calls herself to find out how her son was killed and who would be held responsible.
One of Johnson’s other lawyers, Keith Adams, pointed the finger at the GCPD and its chief at the time, John Powell, who was later indicted and acquitted on separate corruption charges.
“GCPD from day one was perpetuating what you would find out was a lie, correct?” Adams asked Cooper Jones. She confirmed it.
The 16 calls
One piece of evidence that hangs over the case, beyond complex legal theories about conflict-of-interest prosecution tactics, is the phone calls between Johnson and McMichael.
The AG’s office revealed in 2022 that there were 16 calls between phone numbers for McMichael and Johnson between Arbery’s death and the McMichaels’ arrest. Several were unanswered or voicemails, and others were close to half an hour in length. Fowler suggested the calls represented a back-channel process to influence the criminal investigation and help her friend.
There were also calls between Johnson, her deputy prosecutors, and Barnhill.
It’s not clear what the AG’s office plans to present about the calls during the trial or if the evidence includes the content of the calls. Fowler did not discuss the exact contents in his opening arguments nor in the first three witnesses.
On Tuesday, Steel beat Fowler to the punch and preemptively told the jurors what each of the calls between McMichael and Johnson included.
The calls were not related to influencing the outcome, Steel said. She either ignored McMichael’s calls, or informed her former employee to be careful, as she thought at the time they were victims, not perpetrators, according to Steel.
“Get a lawyer,” she allegedly told McMichael on April 30. “There are problems for you and your family.”
Jury of teachers, retirees
How persuasive these arguments will be with the jury remains to be seen.
The Glynn County jury was selected on Monday. It consists of a preschool teacher, a supermarket manager, a pharmacist and several retirees. Ten are white, one is Asian and one is Black. Nine are women and three are men.
Johnson was involved in selecting jurors, passing notes to her lawyers, and giving suggestions.
Arbery’s mother, Cooper Jones, has been in court every day. So have Arbery’s aunt and father.
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