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A choose Tuesday set an early 2025 trial date for a former Georgia district legal professional charged with interfering with the police investigation into the killing of Ahmaud Arbery,
Jury choice within the felony misconduct trial of Jackie Johnson is scheduled to start Jan. 21 in coastal Glynn County, based on an order by Senior Choose John R. Turner. He set a Dec. 11 listening to for attorneys to argue their closing pretrial motions.
Johnson was the county’s prime prosecutor in February 2020 when Arbery was fatally shot on a residential road as he ran from three white males chasing him in pickup vans. Whereas Arbery’s pursuers argued they mistakenly believed the 25-year-old Black man was a felony and that he was shot in self-defense, all three had been later convicted of homicide and federal hate crimes.
Johnson recused her workplace from dealing with the killing as a result of the person who initiated the lethal chase, Greg McMichael, was a retired investigator who had labored for her. His son, Travis McMichael, had shot Arbery at shut vary with a shotgun. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the pursuit and recorded graphic cellphone video of the taking pictures that leaked on-line greater than two months later.
Johnson was voted out of workplace months later, a loss she blamed largely in outrage over Arbery’s killing. In September 2021, a grand jury indicted her indicted her on a felony depend of violating her oath of workplace and a misdemeanor depend of hindering a police officer.
The case has moved a crawl since Johnson was first charged, reported to jail for reserving after which launched. She has but to seem in courtroom. The choose’s scheduling order Tuesday was the primary motion taken since final November, when Turner denied authorized motions by Johnson’s legal professionals to dismiss the case.
The choose advised The Related Press in September that the delays had been unavoidable as a result of one in every of Johnson’s attorneys, Brian Metal, had spent many of the previous two years in an Atlanta courtroom defending Grammy-winning rapper Younger Thug in a sprawling racketeering and gang trial.
Turner’s order shifting forward with Johnson’s case got here lower than per week after Younger Thug pleaded responsible to gang, drug and gun costs.
Metal and legal professional John Ossick, who additionally represents Johnson, didn’t instantly reply to an e-mail message looking for remark Tuesday night.
Georgia Legal professional Normal Chris Carr mentioned in a press release that “we stay up for presenting our case in courtroom.”
Whereas the boys liable for Arbery’s dying are serving life jail sentences, his household has insisted that justice gained’t be full for them till Johnson stands trial.
“It’s very, crucial,” Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mom, advised the AP in September. She didn’t instantly return a telephone message Tuesday.
