A judge dismissed the remaining criminal charge against former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson, clearing her of legal wrongdoing in the investigation of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder.
Senior Judge John Turner, of the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit, threw out the felony charge of violating oath of office, agreeing with a motion made earlier by the defense. The move came before closing arguments and before jury deliberation because of a technical error in the indictment.
The ruling ended the trial and came two days after Turner dismissed the second charge against Johnson because of insufficient evidence by prosecutors.
A 2021 indictment brought by Attorney General Chris Carr against Johnson came amidst widespread community and national outcry about criminal justice and public safety in Glynn County after Arbery’s death.
The Black jogger was hunted and killed by three white men, but it took more than two months for an arrest to be made because county law enforcement initially had ruled the shooting was justified. Johnson, a Republican who had served as district attorney for a decade, had been accused of interfering in the investigation because one of the people later convicted of the murder was her former investigator. The three men — Greg McMichael, his son Travis, and their neighbor William “Roddy” Bryan — were convicted for Arbery’s murder in 2022.
Johnson faced two charges at trial: that she violated her oath of office by hand-picking a friendly district attorney to investigate Arbery’s murder in order to protect the McMichaels and that she obstructed a police investigation by ordering Glynn County cops to not arrest Travis McMichael.
On Wednesday, Turner ruled in favor of a defense motion that the state attorney general’s office attached the wrong oath to the indictment, rendering the felony charge invalid.
“Frankly, this is a decision I didn’t want to make,” Turner said. But he said he felt like the defense’s request to dismiss the felony charge “needs to be granted.”
Turner expressed sympathy for Arbery’s family gathered in the courtroom.
“In listening to the testimony here, I will never understand why these people were never arrested,” the judge said of Arbery’s killers.
Johnson did not speak to reporters after the judge’s decision, which her lawyer said leaves her clear of any professional taint.
The attorney, Brian Steel, said Johnson cannot be charged again on the same crimes because of the legal doctrine known as double jeopardy.
“She’s sad for the Arbery family. She’s sad for the loss of life of Ahmaud Arbery,” Steel said about his client.
Johnson took the stand earlier in the week in her own defense and declared her innocence, saying she had followed proper procedure by recusing herself due to the conflict of interest of knowing McMichael. She also told the court that for weeks she said she believed Arbery’s killing was self-defense because that’s what others told her. She changed her mind, she said, when the video taken by Bryan of the murder became public in May 2020, when she viewed it for the first time.
Wanda Cooper Jones, Arbery’s mother, disagreed with the judge’s ruling that erases any accountability for Johnson.
“Jackie Johnson knew what happened well before she admitted to,” Cooper Jones said.
Cooper Jones has a pending civil rights lawsuit against Johnson, Glynn County, the McMichaels and individual officers of the Glynn County Police Department. She told reporters that she will continue to advocate for Arbery “until I leave this Earth.”
Steel, one of Johnson’s four-lawyer defense team, blamed Carr, who is running for Georgia governor in 2026, for trying to make political capital out of his client’s prosecution.
“Ahmaud Arbery was slaughtered for no reason, and then Attorney General Carr piggybacked on the greatest tragedy in this county, our state, our country, the world, and indicted an innocent woman,” Steel told reporters gathered outside of the courtroom. “This is a sad day.”
In a statement, Carr said that his office stands by the case his prosecutors brought but regrets that a jury did not get to make a decision. He said he continues to support the Arbery family.
“As I have said to his family and many others before: if that was my child, I would want to know that everyone was doing everything possible to ensure justice was served,” Carr said.
How the prosecution’s case fell apart
For Glynn County residents looking for answers about why it took 74 days to arrest the men responsible for Arbery’s death, the trial painted an inconsistent and, at times, deeply contradictory picture.
The prosecution originally argued that Johnson worked behind the scenes to pick a friendly district attorney to protect people she knew from being accountable for a heinous crime. That argument fell flat, however, following testimony by former Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George E. Barnhill, who first took on the case when Johnson recused herself, and Glynn County Police officers, who were in charge of the investigation into Arbery’s killing. Each of these officials testified that McMichaels were never considered criminal suspects because they had considered the shooting as a justified killing.
On Monday Turner threw out the only other charge against Johnson, a misdemeanor, which accused her of instructing Glynn County Police officers not to arrest Travis McMichael.
The same officer who was supposedly instructed, according to the 2021 indictment, took the stand last week and said she never spoke to Johnson. The judge ruled there was “not one scintilla of evidence” to support that charge by the AG.
The case consisted of eight days of testimony and at least 19 witnesses. The witnesses included district attorneys, former district attorneys, judges, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents, and Glynn County police officers.
The evidence included conflict of interest letters, maps of Georgia judicial circuits, interviews with the GBI and body-camera footage from the day of Arbery’s murder. Throughout the case, Johnson’s legal team singled out GCPD for blame and said Johnson tried to do the right thing.
The charge dismissed on Wednesday alleged that Johnson infringed upon the rights of the Arbery family by advising the attorney general’s office to choose her hand-picked replacement — Barnhill — to oversee the case. That amounted to influencing the investigation’s outcome, prosecutors alleged.
GCPD Assistant Chief Stephanie Oliver and Barnhill both testified that the other had made up their mind that the McMichaels were victims, not suspects. Neither said Johnson had influenced them.
To members of Arbery’s family who attended the trial, that callousness was shocking, as was the attitude of Glynn County officers at the scene of the murder.
In one video clip shown by the defense, Greg McMichael asked a GCPD officer on the scene whether they would be putting handcuffs on his son, who had shot Arbery.
“Why would we need cuffs?” responded Officer Katelyn Roberts.
The fact that several officers who took the stand still worked for GCPD or the Glynn County Sheriff’s Office was not lost on the Arbery family.
“This community have no trust in this county,” Marcus Arbery, Ahmaud’s father, told The Current outside the courthouse on Wednesday.
‘We got them’
For Johnson, the ruling from the judge served as vindication. As spectators cleared out of the courthouse, cheers could be heard from the room where Johnson and her team of lawyers sat.
Family members from her hometown of Alma and supporters from the county hugged one another outside the courtroom.
Ahmaud Arbery’s aunt, Diane Jackson, told The Current that she’s gratified that justice was achieved for Ahmaud with convictions of the McMichaels and Bryan.
“We got them,” Jackson said. They thought they could “chase Ahmaud through Satilla and gun him down and wash the blood off” themselves.
She said she would rely on God to ultimately hold others accountable.
“We’re going to let God take care of the ones with the money,” she said, referring to Johnson.
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