BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A jury watched video Wednesday of a police investigator telling the man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery that he wasn’t being arrested soon after he, along with his father and a neighbor, chased and killed the Black man after spotting him running in their neighborhood.
“You’re going home today,” Glynn County police investigator Roderic Nohilly told Travis McMichael roughly two hours after the shooting on Feb. 23, 2020.
Nohilly testified Wednesday as the first prosecution witness in the criminal misconduct trial of former District Attorney Jackie Johnson, coastal Glynn County’s top prosecutor when Arbery was killed nearly five years ago.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office is prosecuting Johnson on charges that she violated her oath of office and interfered with police investigating Arbery’s killing.
But Johnson’s defense lawyers seized on opportunities to use Nohilly and a second prosecution witness Wednesday to undercut prosecutors’ arguments that Johnson abused her power to delay arrests and influence the appointment of an outside prosecutor who had decided Arbery was killed in self-defense.
The former DA is being prosecuted by Georgia’s attorney generalNo one was charged in Arbery’s killing until more than two months later, when cellphone video of the shooting leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. Travis McMichael and his father, Greg McMichael, were then arrested along with a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan. All three were later convicted of murder as well as federal hate crimes.
Greg McMichael had worked for Johnson as an investigator and left a voicemail on her cellphone asking for help an hour after the killing.
Johnson insists she did nothing wrong and immediately recused her office. She reached out to a neighboring district attorney, George E. Barnhill, who advised police the day after that the shooting appeared to be justified.
Prosecutors say Johnson violated her oath of office, a felony, by recommending that the attorney general appoint Barnhill to oversee the investigation into Arbery’s death without disclosing that Barnhill had already concluded the shooting wasn’t a crime.
Witness sees ‘nothing illegal’ if Johnson made the recommendationThe jury Wednesday saw Johnson’s February 2020 letter asking the state Attorney General’s Office for an outside prosecutor. It made no mention of Barnhill.
Georgia Prosecuting Attorneys Council Executive Director Pete Skandalakis, called to testify as a prosecution witness, said during cross-examination that even if Johnson had recommended Barnhill’s appointment knowing he had decided the shooting was justified, “there’s nothing illegal about it.”
With Nohilly on the witness stand, defense attorneys played the jury video clips of the investigator’s interview with Travis McMichael to bolster their argument that police had decided against making arrests before any prosecutors got involved.
“I’ve talked to the other investigators,” Nohilly tells Travis McMichael in their recorded interview. “It is what it is, all right? You’re not being charged with anything.”
Nohilly testified that he didn’t speak with Johnson about the shooting. He also said police were still investigating and hadn’t ruled out bringing charges later.
“I was trying to maintain rapport with him,” Nohilly said of Travis McMichael, “because the investigation was still right at the beginning.”
Police told Arbery’s mother he was shot committing a burglary A few hours after police interviewed the McMichaels and sent them home, a Glynn County investigator called Arbery’s mother to tell her that her 25-year-old son was dead.
Wanda Cooper-Jones cried on the witness stand Wednesday as she recalled being at her mother’s house, a three-hour drive from her home in Brunswick, when her cellphone rang. She said she knew it was bad news when the officer told her that he was standing outside her front door.
“The officer shared that Ahmaud was committing a burglary,” Cooper-Jones testified. “He was confronted by the homeowner, there was a struggle over the firearm and Ahmaud was shot and killed.”
The testimony Wednesday suggests that Greg McMichael’s account that he and his son had seen security camera videos that made them suspect Arbery of stealing from a neighboring home under construction had a decisive influence on authorities. He also insisted that his son shot Arbery in self-defense.
After the shooting, police found that Arbery was unarmed and had no stolen property.
Much like Cooper-Jones, Nohilly said he was first told by fellow officers that Arbery was shot while committing a “home invasion.”
‘I don’t think we hugged.’Cooper-Jones said police and prosecutors shared little information about her son’s killing until after Barnhill stepped aside from the case in April 2020.
Under questioning by one of Johnson’s lawyers, Cooper-Jones acknowledged that Johnson at one point met with her slain son’s father.
When Cooper-Jones said that she never got such a meeting, defense attorney Keith Adams asked if she had met Johnson outside the courthouse soon after the shooting video became public.
“You were driving by and you called to her, and she came over and gave you a hug,” Adams said.
Cooper-Jones replied: “I don’t think we hugged.”
