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Killing of Ahmaud Arbery Is Switched to a Fourth Prosecutor Killing of Ahmaud Arbery Is Switched to a Fourth Prosecutor
(about 4 hours later)
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — The Georgia attorney general on Monday named a new prosecutor to oversee the case of Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old black man whose killing has drawn national attention and stirred protests after a video circulated showing his fatal encounter with two white men who have been charged with murder. BRUNSWICK, Ga. — The Georgia attorney general on Monday named a new prosecutor to oversee the case of Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old black man whose killing has drawn national attention and inspired protests after a video emerged of his fatal encounter with two white men who have been charged with murder.
The prosecutor, Joyette M. Holmes, comes from Cobb County in the Atlanta metropolitan area, where she is the first African-American to serve as district attorney. In naming Ms. Holmes, Attorney General Chris Carr noted that she would bring to bear the resources of one of Georgia’s largest prosecutor’s offices. The new prosecutor, Joyette M. Holmes, comes from Cobb County in the Atlanta metropolitan area, where she is the first African-American to serve as district attorney. She is the fourth prosecutor assigned to lead a case that has bounced among district attorneys and law enforcement agencies.
Ms. Holmes becomes the fourth prosecutor in a case that has been marked by outside scrutiny and squabbling between law enforcement officials over how it’s been handled. Attorney General Chris Carr appointed Ms. Holmes as the public pressure evolved from pushing for criminal charges to broader scrutiny of the way the case had been handled by prosecutors and the police. On Sunday, Mr. Carr, a Republican, urged the Justice Department to initiate a sweeping investigation into the case.
She will take on the prosecution of Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, who were charged with murder and aggravated assault after they took up weapons and pursued Mr. Arbery in a pickup truck. Travis McMichael fatally shot Mr. Arbery after getting out of the truck, the authorities said. “The family, the community and the state of Georgia deserve answers,” he said in a statement, “and we will work with others in law enforcement at the state and federal level to find those answers.”
The release of the video last week, months after the killing, set off a wave of public pressure calling for the McMichaels to be arrested and for criminal charges to be brought. Justice Department officials said on Monday they were weighing whether to bring federal hate crime charges, and had asked state officials to pass along relevant information as they consider beginning an investigation.
The men were arrested roughly two days later, as Tom Durden, the prosecutor who Ms. Holmes has replaced, called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. A previous prosecutor on the case had asserted that the McMichaels’ actions had been covered by self-defense and citizen’s arrest statutes.
The Justice Department said Monday that it was looking into whether to bring federal hate crime charges in the case.
The case will be the highest-profile prosecution Ms. Holmes has handled since becoming the district attorney in Cobb County last year. She had spent four years as the county’s chief magistrate when she was appointed to the prosecutor’s office by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, who described her as “one of our best and brightest in Georgia.”
She was the first woman, as well as the first African-American, to serve in the job. “Being a black woman, I think there’s a role that it plays and it’s one of pride in the community and one of perspective that can be given that may not have been given in the years before,” Ms. Holmes told reporters when her appointment was announced, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I think those things are a bonus for Cobb County.”
The decision to place Ms. Holmes in charge comes after Mr. Carr, the attorney general, asked federal officials to launch an investigation into the case.
He has pressed for an inquiry that would extend beyond the circumstances of the fatal encounter in February to the way local law enforcement officials and prosecutors handled the case as months elapsed without arrests. Officials from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said after the arrests last week that the purview of their investigation did not extend that broadly.
“We are committed to a complete and transparent review of how the Ahmaud Arbery case was handled from the outset,” Mr. Carr said on Sunday. “The family, the community and the state of Georgia deserve answers, and we will work with others in law enforcement at the state and federal level to find those answers.”
The Justice Department said that it had asked Mr. Carr to forward information his office has about the case’s handling as it weighs initiating a broader investigation.
“We will continue to assess all information,” Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in a statement, “and will take any appropriate action that is warranted by the facts and the law.”“We will continue to assess all information,” Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in a statement, “and will take any appropriate action that is warranted by the facts and the law.”
Mr. Arbery was killed shortly after 1 p.m. on Feb. 23 after the two men, Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, armed themselves with a shotgun and handgun and chased after Mr. Arbery in a pickup truck through Satilla Shores, a quiet middle-class enclave on the South Georgia coast near Brunswick.
The men told investigators they believed that Mr. Arbery looked like a man suspected in a rash of break-ins in the area. As they followed Mr. Arbery, they yelled, “Stop, stop, we want to talk to you,” according to Gregory McMichael’s account in a police report. Mr. Arbery was fatally shot by Travis McMichael after Mr. McMichael got out of the truck, the authorities said.
The shooting happened within the jurisdiction of the first prosecutor, Jackie Johnson, a district attorney who recused herself because the elder Mr. McMichael had worked for her as an investigator.
The next prosecutor, George E. Barnhill, stepped aside because his son worked for Ms. Johnson, but not before he advised that the McMichaels were protected by the state’s citizen’s arrest and self-defense statutes and should not be held responsible for the killing. In his letter to the state attorney general asking to be recused, Mr. Barnhill said that his son had handled a previous felony probation revocation case involving Mr. Arbery, and that Gregory McMichael had also helped with a previous prosecution of Mr. Arbery.
The third prosecutor, Tom Durden, received the case in mid-April and called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation last week. About two days later, the father and son were charged with murder and aggravated assault.
Mr. Carr said the decision to name Ms. Holmes was rooted in her being the leader of one of Georgia’s largest prosecutor’s offices, enabling her to bring to bear a level of resources that Mr. Durden could not. Ms. Holmes’s office has 45 lawyers and an annual budget of $8.5 million, and it prosecuted more than 6,000 new felony cases in 2018. Mr. Durden’s much smaller agency handles criminal cases for a cluster of rural and coastal counties.
The case had “grown in size and magnitude,” Mr. Carr said on Monday, adding, “as an experienced district attorney, Tom has recognized that another office is better suited from a resource perspective to now handle the case.”
S. Lee Merritt, a lawyer for Mr. Arbery’s family, said on Monday that he had explicitly asked Mr. Carr’s office to appoint a different prosecutor — preferably a black one, he said, given “the strong racial overtones in this case.” All three previous prosecutors are white.
Mr. Merritt said he was concerned about Mr. Durden’s ability to conduct an impartial investigation, and feared that he had been influenced by Mr. Barnhill’s legal analysis.
Mr. Merritt also said he was disappointed that Mr. Durden did not immediately push for charges against the McMichaels. “Instead, he sat on it,” Mr. Merritt said.
The arrests of the McMichaels last week fueled growing skepticism over how the case had previously been handled. Mr. Arbery’s family and activists asked why prosecutors and the Glynn County Police Department, the agency that responded to the shooting, had avoided making arrests, while the G.B.I. moved quickly to bring charges.
“I can’t answer what another agency did or didn’t see,” Vic Reynolds, the G.B.I. director, said in a news conference on Friday. Yet, he added, “Within 36 hours we had secured warrants for two individuals for felony murder — I think that speaks volumes.”
On Saturday, Ms. Johnson, the first prosecutor, and the Glynn County police squabbled over the response, issuing competing statements.
Glynn County officials claimed that the police had been advised by both Mr. Barnhill and officials in Ms. Johnson’s office to not arrest the McMichaels. Others argued that the Police Department, which has been plagued by past accusations of misconduct and flawed investigations, misjudged the case.
Louis M. Dekmar, the police chief in LaGrange, Ga., and a former president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said the Glynn County police should have immediately turned the case over to the G.B.I. to avoid the perception of a conflict, considering that Gregory McMichael had worked in local law enforcement circles. In addition to working as an investigator in Ms. Johnson’s office, he had been on the Glynn County police force in the 1980s.
“In these sorts of instances where there are close personal relations or prior employment relationships, the accepted practice is to call an outside agency,” Chief Dekmar said on Monday.
Ms. Johnson took a swipe at the local police, noting that the G.B.I. announced arrests within days of taking the case. “That is what a law enforcement agency does,” Ms. Johnson said, “and if the Glynn County Police Department is unable to make a probable cause determination on its own, why do we have a Police Department?”
Mr. Barnhill wrote to the state attorney general’s office in April asking to be recused. In his letter, he also seemed to be annoyed by the way the case was going. He complained that a local “rabble rouser” had begun publishing “wild and factually incorrect and legally wrong accusations” on social media calling for marches “against the McMichaels at their homes, and my son’s home in Brunswick.”
Mr. Barnhill also wrote that Mr. Arbery’s family had begun calling for him to be removed from the case. He pointed to other legal troubles, unrelated to the killing, involving members of Mr. Arbery’s family, including a brother and a cousin.
The case is the highest-profile prosecution Ms. Holmes has handled since becoming the district attorney in Cobb County last year. She had spent four years as the county’s chief magistrate when she was appointed to the prosecutor’s office by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, who described her as “one of our best and brightest in Georgia.”
Ms. Holmes, a Republican and a member of the N.A.A.C.P., was the first woman, as well as the first African-American, to serve as Cobb County district attorney.
On Monday, she said her office was preparing to present the case to a grand jury in Glynn County.
“We appreciate the confidence that Attorney General Carr has in our office’s ability to bring to light the justice that this case deserves,” she said in a statement. Still, she added, “The call to serve will not be taken lightly.”
Rick Rojas reported from Brunswick, and Richard Fausset from Atlanta.