Judge dismisses murder charges against Atlanta officer in 2019 shooting of unarmed man in closet

ATLANTA — A federal judge has thrown out murder charges against a former Atlanta police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man hiding in a closet.

U.S. District Judge Michael Brown ruled Tuesday that Sung Kim, a 26-year veteran of the Atlanta police department, acted in self defense and shouldn't face charges in the 2019 killing of 21-year-old Jimmy Atchison.

''The evidence for self-defense is so overwhelming it is hard to understand how Georgia could have brought these charges in the first place, much less continued with them over the two-and-a-half years since," Brown wrote in his ruling. ''Defendant's shooting of Mr. Atchison was textbook self-defense.''

Kim was indicted in state court in 2022, but moved his case to federal court because he was assigned to an FBI fugitive task force when the shooting happened and thus was a federal officer.

Atlanta activists have cited Atchison's death as an example of unjustified police violence against Black people. His name was often chanted by Atlanta protesters during Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020.

The shooting also sparked policy changes. The Atlanta Police Department withdrew its officers from federal task forces because task force members weren't allowed to wear body cameras, meaning there is no video of Atchison's shooting. Officers returned after federal agencies began allowing local task force officers to wear cameras.

Atchison was killed on Jan. 22, 2019, after Kim and other task force members tried to arrest him on charges that he stole a woman's purse and cellphone in an armed robbery. Kim retired from the Atlanta Police Department several months later. A Fulton County grand jury indicted Kim on charges that included felony murder and involuntary manslaughter.

Officers forced their way into an apartment, prompting Atchison to jump out of a window, run through a second building and hide beneath a mound of clothes in a closet in another apartment. In his ruling, Brown rejected claims by a state witness that officers violated generally accepted police practices by entering the other apartment and the bedroom where Atchison was hiding.

Testimony showed Kim shot Atchison in the face after Kim either yelled for Atchison to not move or show his hands. Atchison suddenly moved his hands from under the clothes. Family members say Atchison was raising his hands to surrender when Kim shot him in the face. Kim and other officers testified that they believed Atchison's move was threatening, as if he had a gun. Brown ruled that fear was reasonable and justified a shooting in self-defense.

''Nothing required defendant to hold off shooting until he literally saw a gun in Mr. Atchison's hand,'' the judge wrote. ''He had a reasonable belief Mr. Atchison was armed and was going to shoot him. That is all that matters.''

Nabika Atchison, Jimmy Atchison's sister, said in a statement that relatives are ''deeply disappointed'' by Brown's decision, ''but with today's climate surrounding police brutality, I can't say we are surprised.''

Tanya Miller, a Democratic state House member and lawyer representing the Atchison family, said the decision is a ''painful subversion of justice.''

''This decision underscores the troubling gap in accountability when local officers operate on federal task forces — a no-man's land where they can violate their own department's policies, the Constitution, take a young life, and still avoid standing trial,'' Miller wrote in a text message.

Don Samuel, a lawyer for Kim, said via email that the ruling was correct.

''It is hard to celebrate when a young man died," Samuel wrote, "but there is no doubt that the decision of the Fulton County DA's office to compound the tragedy by prosecuting Sung Kim was an inexcusable abuse of prosecutorial discretion."

The Georgia state conference of the NAACP called on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to appeal the ruling, saying it unjustly shields officers from accountability when they kill unarmed people.

''This ruling is not just a blow to the Atchison family's pursuit of justice — it's a threat to civil rights and public safety across the nation,'' said Gerald Griggs, president of the Georgia NAACP.