[Ahmaud Arbery]
Keith Higgins: “Because of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a lot of people started looking for ways to effect positive change in the justice system. And as they were looking for ways to do that, they… realized that I was running for district attorney.”
Photo: YouTube
Photo: YouTube
In Georgia, Keith Higgins defeated Jackie Johnson and is the new district attorney for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit. Johnson is initial district attorney who mishandled the Ahmaud Arbery case.
Keith Higgins knew he faced long odds when he entered the race.
It’s hard to run as an independent candidate in Georgia. It’s even harder in a small community, when you’re running against someone who’s been top prosecutor in the area for about a decade.
A year ago it seemed like Higgins’ campaign for district attorney of the Brunswick Judicial Circuit had stalled without even getting off the ground.
Then came a case that drew national attention and protests to this conservative corner of southeast Georgia. And everything changed.
In February, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was jogging in a waterfront neighborhood near Brunswick when a former police officer and his son, both White, chased him down and shot and killed him.
Critics accused Jackie Johnson, the district attorney, of mishandling the investigation before she recused herself over a conflict of interest.
Higgins, who was fired by Johnson years ago when he was an assistant prosecutor in her office, says he’d seen her mishandle cases before. It’s one of the reasons he decided to run against her.
“Because of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a lot of people started looking for ways to effect positive change in the justice system,” he said. “And as they were looking for ways to do that, they… realized that I was running for district attorney.”
Read rest of story here.
