ATLANTA — The ex-Atlanta Police officer charged with murder in the 2019 shooting of Jimmy Atchison has filed to move the case to federal court, where he could seek to have the charges dismissed on immunity grounds.
Sung Kim was indicted in the case last month, with additional charges including involuntary manslaughter and violation of oath of office. The filing to have the case heard in federal court was submitted on Jan. 10. Sunday marked four years since Atchison's death.
The ex-officer is arguing that federal officers are immune from state charges, and 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," the filing states.
In November, two officers successfully moved to have the federal courts take up their case in the 2016 shooting death of Jamarion Robinson.
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.