Ahmaud Arbery: new focus on district attorney's flawed prosecutions of black women
Source: The Guardian
Ahmaud Arbery: new focus on district attorney’s flawed prosecutions of black women
• George Barnhill eventually recused himself from Arbery case
• Prosecutions include woman wrongfully imprisoned for murder
Oliver Laughland and Sam Levine
Sun 17 May 2020 10.00 BST
Last modified on Sun 17 May 2020 10.47 BST
The local prosecutor who argued two white men were legally justified in chasing down and killing Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man, has been at the center of aggressive and flawed prosecutions of at least two black women in recent years.
One of the women was wrongfully imprisoned for over a decade on a murder conviction secured by later discredited forensic evidence, and another woman was unsuccessfully tried twice for helping people vote.
George Barnhill, the district attorney for the Waycross judicial circuit in south-east Georgia, advised police in April that Gregory and Travis McMichael should not be charged over the death of Arbery, suggesting that the two had attempted to “stop and hold this criminal suspect” before fatally shooting him.
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Court documents obtained by the Guardian reveal that just months before Barnhill advised against charging both men, his office aggressively opposed a motion filed on behalf of a 53-year-old African American woman, Sheila Denton, requesting a new trial due to flawed forensic evidence used to convict her of a 2004 murder.
Denton was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 for the murder of 73-year-old Eugene Garner, but she has maintained her innocence. Her prosecution, first brought by Barnhill’s predecessor in the district attorney’s office, relied heavily on “bite mark” evidence and the account of a sole witness who defense lawyers said gave conflicting evidence and was heavily pressured by local police into testifying against Denton. Court filings indicate police threatened the witness, Sharon Jones, with being charged over murder herself unless she testified that Denton had confessed to her. Jones was a known crack cocaine dealer and drug addict.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/17/ahmaud-arbery-district-attorney-george-barnhill
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I'd like to hear once again how we're in a "post racial" US.
I'm an old white geezer and even I know better.
