Georgia’s attorney general on Tuesday asked state police to investigate two local prosecutors who punted on the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery.
The announcement comes one day after AG Chris Carr appointed a third state prosecutor to handle the murder case against two white men charged with gunning down the 25-year-old unarmed jogger on Feb. 23. Two other district attorneys recused themselves from the case.
Carr said the initial DAs kept him in the dark.
“When a district attorney is unable to take on a case due to a conflict, our office must appoint another prosecutor to handle the case,” Carr said, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“Unfortunately, many questions and concerns have arisen regarding, among other things, the communications between and actions taken by the district attorneys of the Brunswick and Waycross Circuits,” he said. “As a result, we have requested the GBI to review in order to determine whether the process was undermined in any way.”
Gregory McMichael, 64, (left) and his 34-year-old son, Travis, are seen in mugshots after being charged with murder.APArbery was shot and killed by two white men, Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, while jogging in Brunswick, Georgia.
The case first fell to Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson, who recused herself because the elder McMichael, a former cop, is also a retired investigator in her office.
Johnson has since denied reports from two Glynn County commissioners that she instructed police not to arrest the McMichaels after the shooting.
Waycross District Attorney George Barnhill then got the case — and told police the day after the shooting that Arbery’s death was a “justifiable homicide.”
Waycross District Attorney George BarnhillCourtesy of The Blackshear TimesBarnhill eventually recused himself on April 6 — noting his son is a prosecutor in Brunswick who worked with Gregory McMichael — but not before shooting off a five-point letter to police outlining why the McMichaels did not commit a crime.
It wasn’t until the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the state law enforcement agency, took over the case that the McMichaels were arrested and charged with murder last week.
Not satisfied, Carr on Saturday called for an inquiry into how the case was handled. He now wants that focus to be on the two prosecutors.
Also this week, Carr called for federal investigators to jump into the case, with the Justice Department announcing that it was weighing a federal hate crime probe in the case.
