Please don't let the fact that three racists were convicted of murder, federal hate crimes, and kidnapping charges distract from the fact that those murderers had some help in their scheme to get away with their crime.
Former Glynn County District Attorney Jackie Johnson was indicted on counts of obstruction and violating her oath of office in her response to Ahmaud Arbery’s murder, and according to News 4 Jax, not as much as an initial court appearance had been scheduled for the former prosecutor when the federal verdict came down on Tuesday.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump sent the reminder that there is still more to be done after the verdict was read on Tuesday. “It’s this incestuous culture between police officers and prosecutors that let far too many Black people in America be unjustly killed,” he said in Brunswick. “And then they try to cover everything up and so the cover-up is having blood on Jackie Johnson’s hands as well.”
Crump had these words for the ex-prosecutor in a CNN interview: “You covered up a hate crime. Jackie Johnson, you’re next.”
The specific charges Travis McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor William "Roddie" Bryan were convicted of were interference with rights and attempted kidnapping. All three defendants were charged with unlawfully seizing and confining Arbery "by chasing after him in their trucks in an attempt to restrain him, restrict his free movement, corral and detain him against his will, and prevent his escape."
Travis faced an added count for carrying, brandishing, and discharging a Remington shotgun, and Gregory faced an additional count for using and carrying a .357 Magnum revolver. All three men were found guilty of all charges against them.
The murder began when Travis and Gregory McMichael armed themselves with guns, got into a truck, and chased 25-year-old Arbery on Feb. 23, 2020 through the Satilla Shores neighborhood in South Georgia after accusing Arbery of breaking into a home under construction in the community, according to a federal indictment. The McMichaels had seen Arbery running near the home and proceeded to yell at him, “using their truck to cut off his route, and threatening him with firearms” until Travis ultimately fired two shotgun rounds into the Black former high school football standout. Bryan recorded the shooting and at times, used his truck to block Arbery's route.
In the course of the federal case against the McMichaels and Bryan, it was revealed that the men had a well-documented history of disparaging remarks about Black people before going on to hunt down and kill a Black man.
Gregory McMichael, a former prosecutorial investigator, allegedly wished the late Georgia state representative and civil rights leader Julien Bond dead sooner. “I wish that guy had been in the ground years ago,” he reportedly told a New York real estate agent, according to testimony News 4 Jax covered. “All those Blacks are nothing but trouble and I wish they’d all die.”
Travis called a woman who served under him in the U.S. Coast Guard about a decade ago "an N-word lover" after learning she had been “sexually active with an African American man,” the woman testified. And Bryan reportedly wrote in an online post that his daughter "doesn’t give a f--- about herself" because she had dated a Black man, an FBI analyst testified.
These are the men that it took authorities 74 days—and in Bryan's case longer—to arrest despite Bryan's video of the crime, which was submitted to authorities the day of Arbery's death.
Johnson, the applicable prosecutor at the time, recused herself from the case because Gregory McMichael used to work as an investigator in her office, but she also involved Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Barnhill to act in her stead. His son worked in the same office. Barnhill wrote in his eventual recusal letter that the Arbery family “are not strangers to the local criminal justice system,” according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Barnhill also reportedly told the Glynn County Police Department on Feb. 24 that "he did not see grounds for the arrest of any of the individuals involved in Mr. Arbery’s death."
And just like that, the murderers went free, but because of the perseverance of Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, it was only for a while. “What we got today, we wouldn’t have gotten today if it wasn’t for the fight that the family put up,” Cooper-Jones said during a press conference about the federal verdict.
The McMichaels had all but pleaded guilty to one federal count against them last week in talks with prosecutors about a plea deal that would allow them to serve the first 30 years of their sentences in federal custody. U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood rejected the deal after hearing from Arbery’s family, who insisted the men serve their sentences in a tougher state facility. “Granting these men their preferred conditions of confinement will defeat me,” Cooper-Jones told Wood. “It gives them one last chance to spit in my face after murdering my son.”
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