ATLANTA — Sung Kim, the ex-Atlanta Police Department officer indicted in the 2019 shooting death of Jimmy Atchison, pleaded not guilty in a filing earlier this week with the case now moved to federal court.
Kim entered the not guilty on Monday, records show. The case was moved to federal court by a judge's order in early September.
It's not yet clear when a federal trial would commence, after a pretrial scheduling order, requiring motions by Oct. 16, was rescinded Friday. Attorneys will now have to submit a proposed scheduling order to the judge.
Kim was originally indicted in December 2022, and in January this year he filed to have the case moved to federal court where he plans to claim federal immunity from prosecution. Kim argues that he was operating as a federal officer as part of the FBI Atlanta Metropolitan Major Offender (AMMO) Task Force.
"At all relevant times, Kim was acting under color of federal law, pursuant to his deputation as a member of the FBI AMMO Task Force," a filing from earlier this year stated.
In 2019, Atchison was found hiding in a closet at the end of a foot chase through a building. A federal task force and Atlanta Police were attempting to serve a warrant for armed robbery and, upon finding Atchison, Kim shot him in the face.
In October 2019 the family said they met with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to hear the results of their investigation into the incident. They said at that time they were told Atchison was given two conflicting commands by officers in the room -- to come out with your hands up and not to move. They said he was following the command to come out when he was shot.
Atchison was unarmed, and a witness later came forward to dispute that any robbery had ever occurred.
Kim was never disciplined by APD - instead retiring from the force roughly more than nine months after the shooting. The case was never brought before a grand jury until Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did so last year.
The fallout from Atchison's death in 2019 resulted in Atlanta Police banning officers from participating in federal task forces, which do not allow the use of body cameras. The move was credited in part with an October 2020 decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to allow local police to wear body cameras in accordance with their own department policies while participating in joint task forces.
A federal civil rights lawsuit, filed in federal district court in 2020, alleged that the officers entered the apartment of Atchison's infant son and the child's mother without a search warrant, and then pursued Atchison to another apartment, threatening the tenants with arrest if they were not allowed to enter without a search warrant.
While Kim retired before any determination was made by APD about discipline, the lawsuit said other officers were cited for violations of department policy during the raid.
Those included the failure to obtain a search warrant for the apartment where Atchison was ultimately shot and killed, the failure to file a required use-of-force report, the failure to engage SWAT in conjunction with the operation, and their alleged intimidation of residents of the apartment complex to obtain consent to search their apartments.