Editor’s note: Sandy Hodson’s 14-part investigation into justice in the Brunswick Judicial District continues today with an examination of “the ongoing culture of cover-up, failure to supervise, abuse of power and lack of accountability,” within Glynn County law enforcement, according to a 2019 Grand Jury report. The story starts with an example of how law enforcement there has worked.
The demise of the joint drug task force in Brunswick and Glynn County began in 2017 when leaders of the narcotics squad, GBNET, learned Investigator James Cassada was sleeping with and doing drugs with confidential informants and that another investigator was best friends with a convicted drug dealer.
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Golden Isles Injustice
Part 12
Instead of launching an investigation into Cassada or Officer John Dustin Simpson, Cassada was allowed to go alcohol rehab and returned to work as normal with the narcotics squad, and nothing was said officially to Simpson.
But GBNET and department leaders were about to slip up in an even bigger professional train wreck way when, on Feb. 22, 2018, the squad undertook an undercover investigation into another state that resulted ultimately in the death of a Glynn County resident.
That day in February, after giving Katelyn Jones money to make a drug buy, armed narcotics officers with their faces concealed under black ski masks followed her and her passenger as they traveled to Florida and returned to Georgia a short time later. The narcotics squad called Glynn County Police Department Deputy Kevin Yarborough to do a traffic stop on I-95. The driver had just exchanged cash for a large amount of drugs across the state border in Florida, Yarborough said he was told.
Jones fled from the traffic stop and crashed her vehicle when a state trooper performed what is politely called a PITT maneuver. It means a pursuing vehicle hits a fleeing car intentional to make a driver lose control of the vehicle. Jones’ passenger Stephen Deloach would die four days later from injuries sustained as a result of the maneuver. There were no drugs in the vehicle.
The narcotics squad members, Yarborough and the GCPD leadership would later say Jones or Deloach threw a bag of drugs from the vehicle. Yarborough said he was instructed to omit any mention of the narcotics squad from his report.
Coincidentally, three months later, Chief John Powell began ordering the destruction of dozens of files detailing complaints made against GCPD officers, according to the destruction document.
The misconduct involving Cassada and Simpson and the debacle of a narcotics investigation that led to the death of Deloach was kept under wraps, as was the narcotics squad harassment of a McIntosch County Sheriff officer. But it began to unravel after Gary Whittle’s attorney filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea on Feb. 12, 2019, based on Brady violations.
Brady v. Maryland, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963, is a landmark case. It requires prosecutors to turn over all exculpatory evidence, basically everything that could be perceived as favorable to the defendant.
Six weeks after the Whittle motion was filed, and more than three weeks after the U.S. Attorney sent notice to 21 criminal defense attorneys about the Brady material for Cassada and Simpson, GCPD Chief John Powell told the public Feb. 1, 2019, he had requested the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to investigate the narcotics squad.
In the following uproar, District Attorney Jackie Johnson would drop some 300 drug cases.
A Glynn County grand jury issued a special report detailing their disgust with GCPD, “the ongoing culture of cover-up, failure to supervise, abuse of power and lack of accountability,” on Sept. 9, 2019. A similar presentment had been returned in 2016.
Even with the public airing of perceived corruption in GCPD, they and prosecutors continued to pursue a murder case against Katelyn Jones, the driver the narcotics squad pursued that led to the crash and the death of her passenger. On Oct. 4, 2019, a judge granted a suppression motion, which led to the dismissal of charges against her.
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At the end of the year, Chief Powell ordered the destruction of more internal affairs investigations as well as investigations of pornography on county computers in county clerk’s office and magistrate judge office. Powell ordered more files destroyed Jan. 10, 2020.
On Feb. 23, 2020, three men took part in what many would described as the modern-day lynching of Ahmaud Arbery. One of those men was Greg McMichael, a former GCPD officer who went on to spend 20 years working as an investigator for the district attorney’s office.
Before the week was over, Johnson obtained indictments against Powell and other officers. Those charges are still pending.
Johnson herself was indicted on charges related to her actions and non-actions in the events that unfolded after Arbery was gunned down on a Sunday afternoon.
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter covering courts for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.
