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Georgia prosecutors who first handled Ahmaud Arbery’s fatal shooting before charges were filed more than two months later have been investigated for his conduct in the case, sparking a national outcry.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced that he had asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and federal authorities to investigate how local prosecutors handled the murder of Arbery, 25, who was pursued by a father and a white son before being shot on a residential street on February 23 outside the port city of Brunswick. Arbery’s relatives have said he was running at the time.
Gregory and Travis McMichael were not charged with murder until last week, after the release of a graphic video of the murder. Gregory McMichael had told police that he and his adult son armed themselves and chased the young man because they believed it matched the description of a robbery suspect, and alleged that Arbery had attacked his son before they were shot.
“Unfortunately, many questions and concerns have been raised” about the actions of district attorneys, Carr said in a statement Tuesday. As a result, the attorney general asked the GBI to review the matter “to determine if the process was in any way undermined.”
A spokeswoman for the United States Department of Justice, Kerri Kupec, said that federal prosecutors had asked Carr to share the results. Federal officials are also considering whether the hate crime charges are justified.
Brunswick Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson was the first to challenge her office on the case. She defended her office’s involvement, which she insisted was minimal, because Elder McMichael worked for her as an investigator before retiring a year ago. That relationship required the office to walk away from the investigation.
“I am sure an investigation will show that my office did what it was supposed to do and that there were no wrongdoings on our part,” Johnson told the Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday.
When asked if anyone in his office had told police not to arrest the McMichaels or suggested that the shooting could have been justified, Johnson said, “Absolutely not.” She said it was the police who mentioned Georgia’s self defense laws during her call.
Johnson said he contacted neighboring Waycross Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill, asking if his office could advise the Glynn County Police. As it was a fatal shooting, she said, “I didn’t want the case to stop.”
Georgia’s attorney general ended up naming Barnhill to take office on February 27, four days after the shooting. But Barnhill had already warned police “that he saw no reason for the arrest of any of the people involved in the death of Mr. Arbery.”
Weeks after Carr appointed him to the case, and just days before he recused himself on April 7 for a conflict of interest, Barnhill wrote that the McMichaels “were following, in” pursuit, “a robbery suspect, with solid first hand background probable cause, in your neighborhood, and asking / telling you to stop.
“It appears that his intention was to detain and hold this criminal suspect until the police arrived. Under Georgia law, this is perfectly legal, ”Barnhill advised in the undated letter to Tom Jump, a Glynn County police captain. County officials released the letter last week.
Johnson said he couldn’t remember if he had told Carr’s office that he had requested Barnhill’s help before recusing himself. Barnhill had the case for about a month before retiring under pressure because her son works for Johnson as an assistant prosecutor. The phone at Barnhill’s Waycross office rang unanswered Tuesday.
Tom Durden, the district attorney near Hinesville, took the case and held it for more than three weeks before the video was released and called the GBI. On Monday, Carr replaced him with Cobb County District Attorney Joyette M Holmes, one of seven black district attorneys in Georgia.
She lives in Atlanta, far from the coastal community where the shooting occurred, and is “an experienced, respected attorney, both as a lawyer and as a judge,” said Carr, a Republican.
According to the police report, Gregory McMichael said that Arbery attacked his son before young McMichael shot him. The autopsy showed that Arbery was hit by three shotgun blasts. All three shots can be heard in the video, which clearly shows the final shot that hits Arbery at point-blank range before staggering and falling facedown.
Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, have been jailed since Thursday. Neither of them had attorneys in their first court appearances. With the courts largely closed due to the coronavirus, a grand jury cannot be convened to hear the case until mid-June.
