SAVANNAH, Ga. — Barely an hour after his son killed Ahmaud Arbery with a shotgun after they chased him through their neighborhood, Greg McMichael made a call for help to his former boss, the area’s chief state prosecutor.
“My son and I have been involved in a shooting, and I need some advice right away,” McMichael said in a voicemail left on District Attorney Jackie Johnson’s cellphone.
A video of the killing would ultimately lead to charges against McMichael, his adult son Travis McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan. All three white men, who used pickup trucks and guns to try to corral the 25-year-old Black man, are now serving life sentences for murder and federal hate crimes.
But all three men avoided arrest for more than two months as Greg McMichael and Johnson kept in touch by phone, court records show.
Nearly five years later, Johnson is going to trial on charges that she used her office to interfere with police investigating Arbery’s killing. Jury selection is scheduled to start Tuesday in Brunswick, a port city 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Savannah.
Here are key things to know about the case.
Arbery was a frequent runner and his route often included the Satilla Shores subdivision where he was killed in coastal Glynn County, less than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from his home.
When Arbery ran past the McMichaels’ property on Sept. 23, 2020, the father and son grabbed guns and gave chase. Bryan joined them in his own truck and was recording cellphone video when the McMichaels stopped in the road ahead of Arbery, who tried to run around them. The video showed Travis McMichael shooting Arbery at point-blank range as they grappled over his shotgun.
Police found Arbery was unarmed and carried no stolen property, but they let the men go home. The incident report quoted Greg McMichael saying they suspected Arbery had been stealing from a neighboring home under construction and that his son fired his gun in self-defense.
Two months later, Bryan’s video leaked online, triggering outrage as Arbery’s death became part of a broader outcry over racial injustice that followed the 2020 police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. The McMichaels were quickly arrested, as was Bryan two weeks later.
At the time Arbery was killed, Johnson had served for a decade as district attorney for southeast Georgia’s Brunswick Judicial Circuit. Greg McMichael 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 the McMichaels were legally attempting to detain Arbery and that the shooting was justified.
Georgia Attorney General Chris 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. Carr announced his office was prosecuting the case.
Johnson is charged with violating her oath of office, a felony punishable by one to five years in prison, by using her position to show “favor and affection” to Greg McMichael.
The indictment also charges her with a misdemeanor — hindering police investigating the shooting — by “directing that Travis McMichael should not be placed under arrest.”
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.
Jury duty notices were mailed to 500 county residents, which is more than normal, to facilitate selecting an impartial jury, Glynn County Superior Court Clerk Rebecca Walden said.
Potential jurors reporting to the courthouse Tuesday morning will be questioned about what they have read or heard about the case. Walden said she suspects it could take a week or more to arrive at a final jury of 12 members plus alternates.
Johnson’s case has taken three years and four months to go to trial.
Presiding will be Senior Judge John R. Turner, who told the AP in October that the long wait was unavoidable because Steel, Johnson’s lead attorney, spent nearly two years in an Atlanta courtroom defending Grammy-winning rapper Young Thug in a prolonged racketeering and gang trial.
Five days after the rapper agreed to a plea deal in Oct. 31, Turner ordered Johnson to make her first court appearance and scheduled her January trial.