The years-long legal saga of Ronald Johnson Jr., the former Smithfield police detective and Johnston County school board member convicted of felony extortion, has reached its final chapter. A federal judge has dismissed the last of Johnson's civil claims against the Town of Smithfield and a private investigator who publicly branded him a predator and a blackmailer, ending a lawsuit that once named 21 defendants.
U.S. District Judge James Dever ruled in September 2026 that Smithfield had legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons for firing Johnson from the police department in October 2022, according to the Carolina Journal. Dever found that Johnson's personal conduct while serving on the school board had severely eroded the public trust, integrity, and neutrality required of a police detective, effectively gutting the civil rights and employment retaliation claims Johnson had brought against the town under Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Johnson had filed the federal lawsuit in June 2023, accusing a sprawling network of officials of conspiring to force him out of both his police job and his elected office, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. That conspiracy theory had already been sharply narrowed back in March 2024, when Dever dismissed 19 of the original 21 defendants, dropping Johnson's former school board colleagues and Johnston County District Attorney Susan Doyle from the case, per the same Carolina Journal reporting.
The Extortion Case That Sealed His Fate
Johnson's downfall traces back to allegations involving 2022 U.S. House candidate DeVan Barbour. According to the JoCo Report, Johnson threatened to release a damaging audio recording unless Barbour pressured an extramarital partner into recanting statements she had made about Johnson.
That threat led directly to Johnson's January 2025 conviction. A Johnston County jury found him guilty of felony extortion, felony obstruction of justice, and two counts of willful failure to discharge duties, and he received a sentence of 6 to 17 months in prison and was ordered removed from the school board, according to the North Carolina Department of Justice. The case was prosecuted by special prosecutor Benjamin Zellinger.
Johnson went on to serve six months in state prison before his release in July 2025, remaining under post-release supervision until April 2026, the Carolina Journal reported. That criminal history became the legal foundation for dismissing what remained of his civil case.
Some of Critic's Claims Ruled Substantially True
Among the defendants who survived the March 2024 narrowing was private investigator David Marshburn, who had repeatedly accused Johnson of extortion and blackmail during Facebook Live broadcasts, calling him a predator, per the News & Observer. Marshburn had unsuccessfully run for Johnston County sheriff in 2022 and later for Johnson's own school board seat in 2024.
Judge Dever ruled that Marshburn's statements that Johnson used government property to record conversations for personal gain, along with his statements concerning extortion, were substantially true, the Carolina Journal reported. With the conviction on the books, Johnson's defamation claim against his most vocal public critic could not survive.
A Political Paradox in Johnston County
What makes the case remarkable is the gap between Johnson's institutional collapse and his enduring political support. He first won a seat on the Johnston County School Board in 2016, was reelected in 2020, and then, despite mounting censures and a pending criminal indictment, won a third term in 2024 before his January 2025 felony conviction. The school board had censured him twice in 2022 alone, and he had spent 17 years with the Smithfield Police Department, joining in 2005 and making detective in 2012, before his October 2022 firing for what the department called detrimental personal conduct.
By the time Dever's summary judgment order closed out the federal case, Johnson had already lost his elected office, his law enforcement career, his freedom for six months, and, according to Smithfield's own submissions to the court, the public trust the town said justified firing him in the first place. The Carolina Journal first reported the lawsuit's final dismissal.
