On Wednesday (Jan. 29), a jury saw video of a police investigator telling the man who shot Ahmaud Arbery to death that he wasn’t going to be arrested. The suspect, along with his father and a neighbor, followed and killed Arbery after they saw him running in their neighborhood.
“You’re going home today,” Glynn County police investigator Roderic Nohilly told Travis McMichael according to Associated Press. This remark was made around two hours after the shooting on Feb. 23, 2020.
Nohilly took the stand to testify on Wednesday as the first prosecution witness in the criminal misconduct trial of former District Attorney Jackie Johnson, Glynn County’s lead prosecutor when Arbery was killed.
During Nohilly’s testimony, defense attorneys played the jury video clips of the investigator’s interview with Travis McMichael. The clips were shared to support 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 the video. “It is what it is, all right? You’re not being charged with anything.”
Nohilly explained on the stand that he was trying to maintain rapport with Travis McMichael “because the investigation was still right at the beginning.”
Johnson is being prosecuted by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office on charges that she violated her oath of office and interfered with the police investigation of Arbery’s killing.
It wasn’t until more than two of months after Arbery’s killing that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local authorities. After video of the shooting was leaked online, Travis McMichael, his father Greg McMichael and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan,’ were all arrested.
They were all later convicted of murder as well as federal hate crimes.
Johnson says she did nothing wrong and quickly recused her office. However, prosecutors believe that Johnson violated her oath of office by recommending that the attorney general appoint neighboring district attorney, George E. Barnhill, to oversee the investigation into Arbery’s death.
According to them, it was illegal for Johnson to do so without disclosing that Barnhill had already decided the shooting wasn’t a crime.