Enough.
Enough with the pretense that there's a news story with two sides to it here. Enough with giving outlandish — no, slanderous — accusations equal weight with dutiful denials. Enough already.
The perversion of justice in the Kendrick Johnson death case offends the senses — both the sense of smell, as well as the sense of right and wrong.
Kendrick Johnson was the 17-year-old Valdosta teen found dead in a rolled-up cheerleading mat in a high school gym. It was a terrible accident. In January 2013, the youth became trapped in the mat and asphyxiated while trying to retrieve a gym shoe. Investigations by the Lowndes County sheriff’s department and the GBI came to that conclusion early on.
But the case has degenerated into a toxic passion play on race and conspiracy, heavy on the second. Johnson’s grieving family was understandably looking for answers. Then came the “Who Killed KJ?” rallies. Then came the salacious accusations: Brian and Branden Bell, the sons of local FBI agent Rick Bell, beat KJ to death. They are white. Then came the social media witch hunts and threats. Then came the $100 million wrongful death lawsuit that was a slap in the face of reality and a kick in the groin of justice.
Here’s a gem from the suit: Last August, the Johnsons’ attorney filed a complaint alleging, among other things, that the sheriff, the school superintendent and the FBI agent placed Johnson’s body inside the mat in the gym to make his death look like an accident.
Whoa!
Well, that could have happened. And a spaceship might have landed in my backyard last night, too.
Soon after making this nutty claim, Chevene King, the Johnsons’ lawyer, told the court the allegations were “a typographical error,” which means his office seriously needs a better typewriter. They went with a revised scenario in which John Does hid the body in the mat to make it look like an accident.
King told me this week he is advancing with his case.
Luckily, there are also cooler heads in Valdosta.
In the beginning, Rev. Floyd Rose, who heads the local branch of the Southern Leadership Council, was all in.
“When it started out I led 1,600 people in a rally and march to the courthouse,” he said. “But they all backed away now.”
By October 2013, Rev. Rose, former NAACP chapter president Leigh Touchton and state Rep. Dexter Sharper all investigated the matter and came to the conclusion — separately — that the young man’s death was an accident and that the conspiracy theories were hogwash.
In the Johnsons’ theory, the Lowndes County sheriff’s department, GBI investigators, the medical examiner, school officials and a host of others, at risk to their careers and even their own freedom, jumped in to help the young killers. And then they all had to keep their stories straight and mouths shut in a small town.
“Too many things would have to line up,” Rose notes. “Too many people would have to know.”
Rose has a theory why a far-fetched conspiracy theory like that has legs.
“Not a single white person in the history of the county has been convicted of killing anyone black.” he said. “So when something like this happens, there’s a feeling of ‘Here we go again.’ “
Enter Michael Moore, the U.S. attorney, in October 2013. Moore, a former state legislator, had already made a name for himself as the prosecutor who went after ConAgra for shipping tainted peanut butter. Nailing an FBI agent and his sons at the center of a racial murder would be the jelly to his peanut butter.
But what has happened? Moore and other federales have toiled for 28 months and have yet to make a case. The murder case never came about because, well, there wasn’t one. Video from the school, as well as eyewitnesses, have put the Bell brothers away from the death scene. So the posse has seemingly gone another route — get something. Anything. Otherwise this excursion will have been for naught.
Last summer, an armored personnel carrier with a gun turret and about 25 U.S. marshals rolled up to the home of FBI agent Rick Bell, one of the targets of the federal government's tireless efforts. So now it seems the might of the U.S. government squeezed the family, and maybe one or more of them said something to someone that can be construed as "obstruction of justice." Quote marks on justice, that is.
It may seem odd that Rick Bell is still employed by the FBI, still is entrusted by the government to carry a gun, arrest people and carry out his sworn duties. But the marshal’s office went in as if Osama bin Laden was hiding in the linen closet.
Moore left office in November. Rev. Rose told me he met Moore not long before he left office. “He said he had nothing,” the reverend said. “But he never said anything like that publicly. Then he went away. And they wasted all that taxpayer money.
“They got nothing. Nothing. So they’re looking to find something, anything. But it’s not murder.”
Moore doesn’t remember that conversation like that and said he didn’t skedaddle because the going got tough.
“I didn’t leave it hanging,” he said. “It’s been a team effort. It’s in the hands of other capable prosecutors.”
There has been two-track investigation in the case — a prosecutor looking at the death and one looking at a possible obstruction of justice case.
Moore said he was never trying to validate the Johnson family’s claims.
“The role of the prosecutor is not to substantiate the allegations in a civil suit,” he said. “My goal is to seek the truth.”
The Bell family would be glad to hear what that is.
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