Some members of Atlanta’s civil rights establishment on Wednesday added their voices to a growing chorus of skeptics who aren’t buying the official explanation of what caused the mysterious death 11 months ago of a Valdosta teen.
“Someone broke the law. Someone needs to be held accountable,” said Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, speaking before 200 protesters at a rally held on the steps of the state capitol.
The parents of Kendrick Johnson, who attended the rally, want Gov. Nathan Deal to order an inquest into the coroner’s finding that the 17-year-old’s death was accidental. An autopsy supervised by state chief medical examiner Kris Sperry concluded Johnson suffocated after getting stuck reaching into the upright mat for a shoe.
”The governor has the authority to demand a coroner’s inquest,” said Rep. Dee Dawkins-Haigler (D-93) whose district includes parts of DeKalb and Rockdale counties and who is chairwoman of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. “I’m going to demand we find out what happened.”
A spokesman for the governor said Deal plans no action until federal authorities conclude their review of the investigation into Johnson’s death. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia announced in October that he would conduct a formal review of the case.
“Certainly, if another investigation is called for, the governor would be open to that,” said spokesman Brian Robinson.
Speakers at Wednesday’s rally urged protesters to keep the pressure on the governor.
“We need to identify 10 people, at a minimum, who will inundate the governor with emails,” said human rights advocate Martin Luther King III. “An injustice occurred in Valdosta.”
Not everyone in the civil rights community agrees. The president of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Southern Christian Leadership Conference and former president of Valdosta’s NAACP say they don’t believe there’s a conspiracy to cover up Johnson’s death.
When this thing all started, I really thought there was something to it,” Floyd Rose, Valdosta-Lowndes president of the SCLC, recently told the Valdosta Daily Times, “but when the dust settles, the truth will still be the truth.”
Yet new doubts were raised after a report surfaced containing scathing criticism by Lowndes County Coroner Bill Watson into how the investigation was handled.
“The investigative climate was very poor to worse when I arrived on the scene,” Watson said. “The body had been moved. The scene had been compromised and there was no cooperation from law enforcement at the scene.”
The family’s lawyers have also charged that surveillance footage of the gym where Johnson’s body was tampered with, though Lowndes officials insist the raw video was not edited.
“Most likely, Kendrick was quite simply trying to reach into the mat and get his shoe out,” Lt. Stryde Jones, who supervised the investigation, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in October. “I don’t think it’s open and shut. We put a lot of personnel into this. It was the finding we determined. If new evidence comes forward, we’re open to looking at that.”
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