By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
Clarification of a previous letter
Op

Editor

Last week I mentioned in a letter that Tom Durden’ actions or inactions with regards to the Ahmaud Arbery case may have been caused by a racist undertone as opposed to a backlog of cases. 

The Courier mentioned that, Tom Durden’s office took over the case on April 13 and on May 5 decided that the case should be considered for trial by a grand jury.  

Three weeks is a long time to decide that the case needed to go to a grand jury however being that there was not an arrest made this was most likely uncharted territory for the District Attorney and I want to apologize if it seemed like I was calling Tom Durdens actions racist, that was not my intention. 

My intention was to say that, it seems like the justice department in the state of Georgia was and is racist.

No arrest when a black jogger is shot and killed. It took almost four months for an arrest to be made. 

If I understand correctly police on the scene took statements from the killers. I think Chris Carr requesting an investigation of this case as well as the district attorney’s offices in Glynn county and Waycross is a good start to getting to the heart of Georgia’s problems with institutional racism. 

Honestly, and I am not sure if this is possible, but it would be refreshing to see a complete investigation into the entire state’s justice department and the state’s legislative body. 

The fact that Georgia is one of the few states that posses hate crime legislation should point out the problems the state has as a whole with racism.

Again, I do not think the majority of Georgians are racist but I am sure that we live in a state with a legislative body and a justice system that were but with and are still run by racist policies. 

If a proper investigation is done I suspect that the conclusion will be that, the breakdown in Glynn and Waycross are not anomalies to these systems but part of the design of the system.



John Corrigan

Hinesville


Sign up for our e-newsletters