“I ran across a post today in Facebook about Kendrick Johnson. It asked us to remember him. I will never forget this one. So I am going to re-post this. I hope someday the Johnson family finds justice… finds peace.” – G. Hill
About a week ago, my cousin posted a story about Kendrick Johnson. I had vaguely remembered the story. I told her I would check it out. Glad I did. Lets remember Kendrick Johnson.
On January 11, 2013, Kendrick Johnson’s body was discovered inside a rolled up mat in the gymnasium of Lowndes High School in Valdosta, in Georgia, where he was a student. What I am about to tell you is beyond incredible. A preliminary investigation and autopsy concluded that the death was accidental. Yes siree, it seems that Kendrick accidentally died and rolled himself up in a gym mat. The Johnson family wasn’t going for it and demanded another autopsy by their own pathologist. Remember this was in Georgia, where there is a suspicious amount of black people committing suicide by hanging themselves from trees. Anyway,
they hypothesized that Johnson had fallen into the mat while looking for a shoe and died after being unable to get out. Three students told investigators that it was common for some students to store their shoes behind or under the rolled up mats. Johnson was not wearing shoes when he was found. A student at the school said that he shared a pair of Adidas shoes with Johnson, and that after gym class Johnson would always “go to the mats, jump up and toss the shoes inside the middle of the hole.
Johnson’s family hired an independent autopsy conducted by Dr. William R. Anderson. He concluded that traces of blunt force trauma to the right neck and soft tissues suggested the death was not accidental. After the opinion of the private pathologist was released, Johnson’s family stated that they believed Johnson had been murdered. The family retained the services of attorney, but due to an alleged problem with the attorney licence to practice in Georgia, he withdrew from the case. The family filed a legal action to open a coroner’s inquiry into his death. When the judge in that case delayed a decision, pending the outcome of the U.S. District Attorney review, the family demanded that the Governor of Georgia immediately authorize the inquiry instead. The Johnson family, together with the NAACP and other civil rights activists, then held a rally at the state capitol in Atlanta. The governor’s office released a statement indicating that they would await the report of the U.S. Attorney.
The funeral home that processed the body following the GBI’s autopsy stated that they never received Johnson’s organs from the coroner. Johnson’s internal organs were said to have been “destroyed through natural process” and “discarded by the prosector before the body was sent back. Johnson’s body was stuffed with newspapers. The funeral home owner stated that it is standard practice to fill a void in this fashion, and that cotton or sawdust may also be employed for this purpose. Johnson’s family filed a complaint, with a regulatory body, against the funeral home operator. A subsequent investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office found that the funeral home did not follow “best practice” and that other material was “more acceptable than newspaper”. Nonetheless, the investigation cleared the funeral home of any wrongdoing.
n November 2013, 290 hours of surveillance tape from 35 cameras that covered the gym area was released to CNN following a court request. The area where Johnson’s body was discovered, where the gym mats were stored, was outside the range of all of the surveillance cameras. The family of Kendrick Johnson filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Lowndes County Board of Education, its superintendent and the high school principal. The suit alleged that Johnson “was violently assaulted, severely injured, suffered great physical pain and mental anguish, and subjected to insult and loss of life.” While the lawsuit did not name the person or persons allegedly involved in the January 10 event, nor identify the race of alleged perpetrators, it implied a race-based dimension to the hypothetical assault. The lawsuit alleged that the defendants were negligent and violated Johnson’s constitutional right to equal protection based on race. It alleged that the defendants ignored reports that, previously, Johnson had been repeatedly attacked and harassed by a white student.
In August 2014, the parents of Brian and Brandon Bell filed a $5 million lawsuit against Ebony Magazine after the magazine published a series of articles naming two students as possible suspects in the death. The magazine used pseudonyms but was otherwise accurate in descriptions of the boys, including the fact that their father was an FBI agent. The article used as a source an anonymous email to the sheriff’s office alleging that the younger of the two brothers killed Johnson after learning that Johnson had sex with the brother’s girlfriend. Rick and Karen Bell assert that their sons were not involved in the death, are not considered suspects, and have been harassed as a result of the publication. No further information is known as to the status of the lawsuit.
In January 2015, Kendrick Johnson’s family filed a $100 million civil lawsuit in the Superior Court of DeKalb County against 38 individuals. Respondents include three of Johnson’s classmates (two or three respondents are unnamed) and local, state, and federal officials: the school superintendent of Lowndes County, the Valdosta-Lowndes crime lab, the police chief of Valdosta, many sheriff’s deputies, the city of Valdosta, the state medical examiner, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and its five agents, and an FBI agent. The lawsuit alleged that the FBI agent ordered his two sons and a classmate to attack Johnson. Kendrick Johnson’s family alleged that his death was a murder and accused the respondents of a conspiracy to cover up the homicide. Jim Elliott, the Lowndes County Attorney, stated that the allegations are “unfounded” and “baseless” and that any response would be made in court. All local Superior Court judges recused themselves from presiding over the case preventing the lawsuit from being filed and heard in Lowndes County.
Shortly before the lawsuit was filed, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, Michael J. Moore, said in a statement that a federal investigation was still open. Shortly after this sataement, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, Michael J. Moore resigned. After Michael Moore resigned, the case was transferred to the Northern District of Ohio under the leadership of Steven Dettlebach. Shortly after receiving the Kendrick Johnson case, U.S. attorney Steven Dettlebach resigned. Despite these resignations, the Department of Justice investigation continued. I usually don’t add my two cents in a story.. but this ain’t adding up.
In November 2015, the DOJ filed a motion in the civil case to intervene and stay the case. The U.S. Attorney said allowing evidence discovery in the civil suit to continue would have a “chilling effect” on the federal investigation, which had expanded into investigating possible obstruction and grand jury witness tampering. After the DOJ’s motion was denied, Jackie and Kenneth Johnson dismissed their own wrongful death lawsuit, saying that they hoped to refile it after the conclusion of the DOJ’s investigation. They were immediately sued for more than $850,000 in attorney fees and $1,000,000 in defamation damages.
On June 20, 2016, the US DOJ announced that they would not be filing any criminal charges related to Johnson’s death, stating “After extensive investigation into this tragic event, federal investigators determined that there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone or some group of people willfully violated Kendrick Johnson’s civil rights or committed any other prosecutable federal crime.” On August 10, 2017, a judge ruled that Johnson’s family and their attorney must pay more than $292,000 in legal fees to the dozens of people they accused of foul play in a lawsuit that they previously dropped.
There are to many lawyers involved in this mess for me to say something that’s crazy or libel. But I’m just gonna say, “Y’all be careful around them Georgia mats… “
In memory of Kendrick Johnson and Family.
Update: A second investigation has also determined that Kendrick Johnson’s death was an accident.
Repost Hill1News March 2019©
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