“Why does a vigilante man; Carry that sawed-off shot-gun in his hand? Would he shoot his brother and sister down?”
~ “Vigilante Man,” Woodie Guthrie

Way back in February 2020, an unarmed black man was peacefully jogging down a residential street near Brunswick in Glynn County, GA. He was followed by three white men, one of whom (Travis McMichael) subsequently shot Arbery.
It sounded all along like a simple case of a 21st century lynching to me. These lawless vigilantes should have been immediately arrested. But they weren’t.

Gregory McMichael, Travis’ father, was a former cop who had also worked for the local prosecutor, the Glynn County DA (Jackie Johnson), before retiring the year before the shooting. Therefore, the case was buried, with the local prosecutor recusing herself and transferring the case to the Waycross District DA, George Barnhill. Strangely, Barnhill decided that there was “insufficient probable cause” due to Georgia’s self-defense law, even though Arbery was unarmed and running away from (not towards) his attackers.

Then, a video of the event came out. The NAACP got involved and the case started receiving national publicity. Georgia was getting yet another black eye that did the state no good.

So, Chris Carr, Georgia’s Attorney General, got involved. He transferred the case to the Atlanta Judicial Circuit, assigning a new DA who then had the GBI investigate. On May 8, 2020, three months after the killing, felony murder charges were finally filed against the three men accused in the murder.

The Georgia case has been compared to the Kyle Rittenhouse case in Kenosha, WI., whereby Rittenhouse was found not guilty of all charges. However, the cases were much different.

The only similarity was that Rittenhouse was an armed vigilante and the two men he shot to death were not. Arbery was also unarmed.

However, the two white men who were shot were seen in a video pursuing Rittenhouse, also white. His attorney was then able to convince the jury that the vigilante feared for his life, despite the fact that the two men he killed were unarmed.
While in the Glynn County situation, Arbery was shown in a video trying to run away from three white men. They were clearly the ones pursuing a peaceful black jogger.

The verdict will not bring Arbery back to life. But at least we can say that justice has finally prevailed in a deep South state. But not completely. We have yet to see enough done to the two DAs who covered up the case to begin with.

Jackie Johnson, former Glynn County DA, has been indicted and booked for obstruction and violation of oath of office. She had told the Glynn County police not to arrest the shooter. Let’s see what happens when she faces a jury.

So far, Waycross District DA, George Barnhill has gotten away completely with doing absolutely nothing to bring the three murderers to justice. Barnhill determined that the killing was legal because Arbery was a “criminal suspect, despite the fact that none of the three murderers were policemen. Of course, Barnhill’s son worked for the Glynn DA, as did one of the murderers previously.

Will he be held accountable for not recusing himself and immediately deciding that the innocent unarmed black man was at least indirectly at fault (i.e., a burglary suspect) So far, he has not.

Jack Bernard was the first Director of Health Planning for Georgia and served two terms on the Jasper County Board of Health. He retired as a Senior Vice President with a national healthcare corporation. He is now a widely published, nationally known expert on healthcare reform.