Georgia's attorney general has formally requested an investigation into two local prosecutors' handling of the high-profile Ahmaud Arbery case.
The pair, Jackie Johnson and George Barnhill, both recused themselves from the probe for having ties to one of the shooters, but Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr wants to know whether their conduct in the early days of the investigation undermined the process in any way.
"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," he wrote in a statement Tuesday. "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."
Johnson, the district attorney for the Brunswick judicial district, recused herself four days after the Feb. 23 killing because murder suspect Gregory McMichael once worked as an investigator in her office.
Barnhill, the district attorney for the Waycross Circuits, asked to step aside because his son works for Johnson as an assistant prosecutor. But Barnhill's recusal came in April, weeks after he described the shooting as a "justifiable homicide."
Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis, claim they were chasing a burglary suspect in Satilla Shores when Arbery attacked them and ended up getting shot during a scuffle.
But a video that went viral last week shows the suspects cornering an unarmed Arbery as he jogged on a quiet road and shooting him three times. A local police official has also said that the last burglary in that neighborhood was reported nearly two months before the shooting.
The footage has caused a national outcry and accusations of racism.
Arbery was a 25-year-old black man who was reportedly known to the area and sometimes waved to his neighbors. Both suspects are white and the elder McMichael is a well-connected former police officer.
The two were arrested on murder charges two days after the case was turned over to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation last week. This is the same agency that is now investigating Johnson's and Barnhill's conduct.
Johnson, who contacted Barnhill before recusing herself from the case, defended her office's brief involvement in the probe.
"I'm confident an investigation is going to show my office did what it was supposed to and there was no wrongdoing on our part," she told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Johnson said she reached out to Barnhill because she didn't want the case to stall and said it was the police who brought up the issue of self-defense when they called her office for advice on possible charges.
"The police represented it as a burglary case with a self-defense issue," she said, adding that her team declined to assist them because of "our obvious conflict."
Barnhill, however, expressed his opinion the day after the arrests and after the autopsy results came out in early April, saying there were no grounds for any arrest in the case.
"It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived," Barnhill wrote in a letter last month. "Under Georgia Law this is perfectly legal."
