Woman ensnared by discredited Glynn drug unit seeks new trial

Earlier this month defense lawyers filed a motion for a new trial for Mindy Lynn Johnson, arguing that the Glynn County woman’s drug conviction stemmed from legal violations uncovered in an investigation by The Current into prosecutorial and police abuse.

The bid to overturn the young mother’s 15-year sentence has hit a roadblock, however. The Brunswick-area district attorney is fighting to prevent the case from being reopened despite accusations that his predecessor and her team had withheld key evidence of corruption within the special police drug unit that arrested her.

Lawyers for Mindy Lynn say that the prosecutors never disclosed the fact that the informant for the Glynn-Brunswick Narcotics Enforcement Team (GBNET) and primary witness in her arrest was doing drugs and sleeping with a GBNET officer. Since Mindy Lynn’s conviction, three officers from that now-disbanded drug squad have pleaded guilty to felonies and declared unreliable witnesses by a Glynn County Superior Court judge.

In April, The Current revealed that Brunswick Judicial Circuit prosecutors working under prior District Attorney Jackie Johnson (no relation) did not respond fully to a judicial order for a review of hundreds of cases involving these discredited former GBNET officers.

HUNDREDS LEFT BEHIND

• Read the original investigation into the police and prosecutorial misconduct.

That same Superior Court judge, Roger Lane, is now adjudicating the motion for a new trial. A  hearing date has not been set.

Johnson first learned that her case, as well as over 450 others, could have grounds for a legal review when The Current reached out to her in the spring.

At the time, current DA Keith Higgins said his office would not preemptively examine those cases, saying that prosecutors had fulfilled their legal obligations.

Savannah-based attorneys, Michael Schwartz and Karin Kissiah, took on Mindy Lynn as a client in response to The Current ’s reporting and filed an extraordinary motion for a new trial on Aug. 1. (Disclosure: Schwartz is a donor to The Current for less than $150. Read our ethics policy here. )

Johnson was taken advantage of, her lawyers argue, because prosecutors fast tracked her guilty plea without disclosing the unfavorable evidence and “deprived Ms. Johnson of her right to a fair trial.”

Higgins’ office said the legal argument was “mistaken.” The prosecutor assigned to the case filed a response arguing that Georgia legal precedent is clear: you cannot request a new trial when there was no trial to begin with.

“A defendant who enters a plea of guilty may not move for a new trial, extraordinary or otherwise,” Assistant District Attorney Benjamin E. Gephardt argues in the Aug. 15 filing. Gephardt also said the motion falls outside the time frame allowed by law.

Johnson’s lawyers argued that the “cover up” of the evidence is the reason why her filing is delayed.

“That position is not only heartless; it is a betrayal of the most basic principles of justice,” her lawyers wrote in a Monday, Aug. 19, filing. “This honorable Court should remedy that injustice — through whatever legal vehicle necessary — to restore the honor that the Glynn County prosecutorial apparatus took from the Court in seeking Mindy Lynn’s conviction.”

Mindy Lynn’s entanglement with GBNET and the Glynn County court system started years ago, when the specialized narcotics unit was known locally for its highly aggressive arrest operations, and the district attorney’s office, then led by Jackie Johnson, boasted of their high conviction rate.

In January 2017 Mindy Lynn met with Confidential Informant #13 at a motel off I-95, in an interaction during which the informant claimed that Mindy Lynn had sold her meth. She was arrested two weeks later and remained in jail for six months because she couldn’t afford bond. Mindy Lynn waived her right to a trial and pleaded guilty in July 2017. She was sentenced to 15 years, serving three of them in prison and the rest on probation.

The fact that Officer James Cassada was using drugs and having sex with the informant did not come to light until 2019, when a lawyer for another defendant discovered the evidence.

While Mindy Lynn sat in prison, Cassada pleaded guilty and spent 3-5 months in a minimum-security jail, before being released on probation. Cassada had his record wiped clean six years early .

Mindy Lynn was released from state prison in 2020 and began serving her probation. She “was unaware that her case had been flagged for potential review until a reporter contacted her in December 2023 while working on an article about these neglected cases,” her lawyers wrote.

Initially shocked to hear about the misconduct in her original case, Mindy Lynn was uncertain about seeking legal relief and feared her missed probation appointments would land her back in jail, they said.

In March 2024, Glynn County Police officers charged her with violating probation, one of which stems from driving on a suspended license. She is now in the Glynn County Detention Center awaiting a bed at a state prison for substance abuse.