BRUNSWICK, Ga. — A jury has now been seated in the criminal trial for the former prosecutor charged with interfering in the police investigation of the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery.
Former District Attorney Jackie Johnson has been charged with violating her oath of office, a felony, and a misdemeanor count of hindering police as they investigated Arbery’s killing.
Johnson has denied wrongdoing, saying she immediately handed the case to an outside prosecutor.
The jury was to hear opening statements from prosecutors and defense attorneys Tuesday afternoon. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office is prosecuting the case.
Of the 12 trial jurors selected, nine are women and three are men.
At the time Arbery was killed, Johnson had served for a decade as district attorney for southeast Georgia’s Brunswick Judicial Circuit. Greg McMichael, one of the men convicted of killing Arbery, worked in her office as an investigator before retiring in 2019.
Because of that connection, Johnson has said she immediately recused her office from handling the case. A neighboring district attorney, George Barnhill, became the first of three outside prosecutors appointed to take over. He soon concluded Greg McMichael, and his son Travis were legally attempting to detain Arbery and that the shooting was justified.
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Carr ordered an investigation of the two prosecutors in May 2020 soon after the McMichaels were arrested. Carr said he appointed Barnhill based on Johnson’s recommendation, but wasn’t told Barnhill already had advised police that Arbery’s killing wasn’t a crime.
When voters ousted Johnson in the November 2020 election, she largely blamed the controversy surrounding Arbery’s killing and insisted she had done nothing wrong.
The former prosecutor became a criminal defendant when a grand jury indicted Johnson on Sept. 2, 2021.
Johnson told The Associated Press in 2020 that no one in her office told police not to make arrests. Her lead defense attorney, Brian Steel, said during a December pretrial hearing that Johnson was focused on seeking an unrelated high-profile indictment and “didn’t know what was going on with Ahmaud Arbery’s case.”
Prosecutors haven’t disclosed much of their trial evidence but said in court records that 16 calls were made between cellphone numbers for Greg McMichael and Johnson in the weeks following the shooting.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.