An Atlanta father isn’t giving up after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did not appeal a federal judge’s ruling to dismiss the charges against the police officer who killed his son.
Jimmy Hill said he is disappointed, but not surprised by the decision. On Jan. 22, 2019, Hill’s 21-year-old son, Jimmy Atchison, was shot and killed while unarmed by former Atlanta Police Officer Sung Kim.
“This, I expected, because of the way the assistant district attorney was talking. We were having conversations with him weekly, and he kept bringing up that we needed to reach out to the U.S. attorney or try to talk to the U.S. attorney,” Hill told Capital B Atlanta outside the Fulton County Courthouse on Wednesday.
READ MORE: State NAACP Calls for Appeal in Fatal Atlanta Police Shooting After Judge Drops Charges
Hill said he felt that the DA’s office was trying to pass off the responsibility onto federal prosecutors because Kim had been serving on a federal task force at the time of the shooting. In 2023, Kim’s attorneys were able to move the case out of Fulton County Superior Court into the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
The district attorney’s office did not respond to Capital B Atlanta’s request for comment.
“I think she only brought the case originally because she was new in office and wanted to get points,” Tammie Featherstone, Atchison’s aunt, told Capital B Atlanta.
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Although the 30-day window for the DA to file the appeal ended on July 4, they can still file a motion for an extension. The appellate court can grant the extension if it finds that the DA’s office had good cause or excusable neglect for missing the deadline.
On Wednesday morning, Hill and Rabbi Peter Berg of The Temple stood outside the downtown courthouse to put pressure on the DA to reengage in the fight to get justice for Jimmy Atchison. Hill held his trademark “Justice for Jimmy Atchison” sign with side-by-side pictures of Jimmy and Kim.
“There’s a verse in the Bible that says you shall not remain indifferent, when literally translated from Hebrew, it means you should not hide from yourself,” Berg told Capital B Atlanta. “It means we have the obligation and the responsibility to stand up and to speak out when there’s an injustice in the world. And this to me is such a clear injustice.”
Hill said Berg has been a steadfast ally of his family since Jimmy was killed six years ago. He also credits Berg with getting his son’s case in front of Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff who successfully persuaded the U.S. Government Accountability Office to look into federal task forces like the one Kim was on when he killed Atchison.
“An appeal would signal that justice is not just a slogan in Fulton County, it is a promise,” Berg said, reading from a letter that he sent to the DA earlier in the week.
“It would tell Jimmy’s family and every family that is watching this case carefully that their lives matter, that accountability in the law enforcement is not optional.”
The protracted struggle for justice has taken a toll on Atchison’s entire family. Three years after Jimmy was killed, his mother, Cynthia Atchison, died “from a broken heart” according to Hill.
Jemika Atchison, who was two years older than her brother Jimmy, told Capital B Atlanta she thought the outcome of the case would be different.
“We fought, we made posters, we marched almost every single weekend looking to be heard. We got on the news, we did press conferences, and it’s just nothing. I don’t know what we could have done differently,” she said.
Now, Atchison is working on a book about grief made up of dozens of letters she wrote to her brother in the six years since he was killed.
“I started going to Sweetwater Creek [State Park]. They have a lake where you can sit, and I just started writing,” Atchison said.
Hill said he’s glad his daughter found an outlet for her grief, but that his focus is on continuing to put pressure on the DA to appeal the case.
“Where’s that same energy that [she] spent [going] after Trump? Where is that same energy that [she] spent [going] after Young Thug? Where is that same energy?” he said.
