BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Jurors began deliberations just before noon Tuesday in the murder trial of the three men accused of killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery last year, a case that has stoked nationwide outrage and scrutiny of the justice system.
Judge Timothy Walmsley read jurors their instructions after prosecutors, calling part of defense attorneys’ strategy “offensive,” made their final rebuttal to the defense’s closing arguments. Prosecutors say that three White men — Travis McMichael, his son Greg McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan — pursued Arbery without justification, jumping to conclusions about a “Black man running down the street” and using their pickup trucks to trap him in their suburban Georgia neighborhood.
“This isn’t the Wild West,” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said as she argued that the defendants acted as dangerous vigilantes on Feb. 23, 2020.
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Defense attorneys say the accused were concerned citizens who believed that Arbery was a burglar and never set out to hurt him. The men were trying to stop Arbery for the police, they said, when Travis McMichael shot Arbery in self-defense during a struggle.
“It is going to take courage to set aside what you think and feel … and to focus on the bare facts of this case,” Jason Sheffield, an attorney for Travis McMichael, told jurors Monday.
Jurors heard over 10 days of testimony, including from police officers, neighbors and experts with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Last week, Travis McMichael took the stand, choking up at times as he said Arbery struck him and grabbed for his shotgun in the final seconds of the viral cellphone video — taken by Bryan — that triggered public condemnations when it surfaced in May 2020. The national attention and outrage pushed authorities to make arrests more than two months after the killing.
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Now many Americans are awaiting the verdict and the message they say it will send about racial justice and fairness in the justice system. The 12-member jury drew scrutiny even before testimony began when the defense struck all but one Black person from the final panel.
At one point, attorney Kevin Gough — who represents Bryan — objected to “high-profile members of the African-American community,” attending the trial in support of Arbery’s family and asked they not be allowed in the courtroom on the grounds they were trying to influence the jury.
In an instance of his complaining about media coverage and public discussion of the case, he accused a “woke left mob” of influencing the proceedings.
Defense attorney Jason Sheffield on Nov. 22 argued that Travis McMichael feared for his life when he shot Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020. (Reuters)The cellphone shot by Bryan shows Arbery running down a road ahead of Bryan toward the McMichaels. Arbery passes their truck and then turns to run toward Travis McMichael. The truck obscures the men as a first shot is heard. Experts testified that Arbery was shot at point-blank range or nearly so.
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Laura Hogue, an attorney for Greg McMichael, used her closing argument to criticize Arbery for his actions in February 2020, saying he caused his own death because he ran away “instead of facing the consequences” and because he “chose to fight.”
Hogue drew gasps in the courtroom Monday and caused Arbery’s mother to briefly leave when she said that “turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in khaki shorts, with no socks to cover his long dirty toenails,” referring to the neighborhood where he was killed.
Dunikoski said Tuesday that Hogue’s argument was “standard, standard stuff” faulting the victim.
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“I know you’re not going buy into that,” she told jurors. “It’s offensive.”
Defense says Ahmaud Arbery to blame for his death in murder trial’s closing arguments
Dunikoski said Tuesday that people cannot claim self-defense if they are the “initial unjustified aggressor,” are committing felonies or provoke other people to protect themselves. She argued the accused did all three as they chased Arbery for five minutes through their neighborhood of Satilla Shores — less than two miles from Arbery’s home.
“All he’s done is run away from you,” Dunikoski told Travis McMichael last week during cross-examination.
“Run past me, yes ma’am,” Travis McMichael replied.
“And you pulled out a shotgun and pointed it at him,” the prosecutor said.
The younger McMichael replied that he believed at that point “this guy can be a threat and he is coming directly to me.”
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He said he raised the weapon first to warn Arbery off, drawing on de-escalation training from his time in the Coast Guard. Defense lawyers have emphasized that training in arguing that the McMichaels had “probable cause” to perform a citizen’s arrest. They said neighborhood residents knew Arbery not as an avid jogger, but as the stranger who entered an under-construction home several times over a period of months, often at night, alarming them.
On Tuesday, the defense clashed with the prosecution on the meaning of a law central to the case — Georgia’s old statute allowing citizen’s arrests.
As Arbery trial draws to a close, Black Americans again ask if there will be justice
Georgia legislators significantly narrowed the citizen’s arrest law in response to Arbery’s death, and many criticized the old law as an outdated statute encouraging vigilantism. At the time of Arbery’s killing, state law required that a private citizen have “immediate knowledge” of a crime or “reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion” of someone fleeing a felony offense.
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Attorneys for the defendants objected repeatedly and called for a mistrial as Dunikoski told the jury that a citizen’s arrest is meant for “emergency situations.” She argued that such an arrest should be made only immediately following the offense or as the suspect flees directly afterward.
An attorney for the defense said Dunikoski was misrepresenting the law. The judge instructed the jury that a citizen’s arrest must occur immediately after the offense or, in the case of felonies, “during escape” — which defense lawyers said allowed them to argue that the McMichaels and Bryan were apprehending a fleeing suspect for crimes that occurred before Feb. 23, 2020. Last week, defense attorney Bob Rubin had warned that accepting Dunikoski’s view of the citizen’s arrest law would amount to “gutting” the defense’s case.
Walmsley rejected the mistrial request, one of many from the defense over the course of the trial. He said the prosecution and defense were allowed to argue different interpretations of the law.
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The McMichaels and Bryan are all charged as parties to aggravated assault, false imprisonment and two types of murder: malice murder, which requires intent to kill, and felony murder, in which someone commits a felony that causes a death. Dunikoski said all the defendants made Arbery’s death possible, turning to a metaphor in her closing remarks.
Everyone on the winning Super Bowl team gets a ring, she said, from the quarterback to the guy on the bench.
“Everybody is involved,” she said. “Everybody’s responsible.”
Knowles reported from Washington.