Felony murder
Reading the verdict.
A former Georgia prosecutor was indicted Thursday on misconduct charges alleging she used her position to shield the men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery from being charged with crimes immediately after the shootings.
A grand jury in coastal Glynn County indicted former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson on a felony count of violating her oath of office and hindering a law enforcement officer, a misdemeanor.
The indictment resulted from an investigation Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr requested last year into local prosecutors’ handling of Arbery’s slaying after a cellphone video of the shooting and a delay in charges sparked a national outcry.
“While an indictment was returned today, our file is not closed, and we will continue to investigate in order to pursue justice,” Carr, a Republican, said in a statement.
Sometimes a national outcry is required.
I don’t find any joy in this, such a verdict was necessary but I don’t think it brings peace to Arbery’s family for this upcoming holiday. Of course, they would rather have him with them and not be at a loss. They would not have had to hear their son being treated to accusations of being a man with long dirty toenails, and this verdict was a repudiation of the sort of racism that the defense tried to invoke in the jurty as they were about to deliberate.
Well, I find little joy in this verdict, either, but it is surely correct and important in many respects, particularly since it comes hard on the heels of the Rittenhouse verdict, which, though doubtless correct in the circumstances, predictably got the right fired up, with an interview with Rittenhouse by Tucker Carlson, a meeting with Trump, etc. – things that are unlikely to lead to any improvements in Rittenhouse’s character.
Really? You’d think he would be so relieved that he would quietly return home, and focus on doing good, and avoiding the limelight.
I should also add that if we are unable to see institutional racism in the murder of Arbery, in the attempted cover-up by the prosecutor, as well as in the blatantly racist appeals to possibly racist jurors by the defence during the trial, we must be wearing ideological blinkers.
#maddog1129: yes, one would have thought that KR would have done all those things, had he any sense. But in the limelight is an all-too-attractive place to be, as Republicans fight to get him as an intern, to use him, according to KR’s own lawyer, as a way of raising money, or as a way of introducing a federal ‘stand-your-ground’ law (courtesy Matt Gaetz), and to provide him with an AR-15, as this tweet by Donald Trump, Jr suggests: “Gun Owners of America is sending Kyle Rittenhouse an AR-15. Sign the card in support of Kyle. Americans have a fundamental right to defend themselves and to keep and bear arms. The verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is a recognition of those rights.” It is hardly ‘woke’ to object to this.