TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
Politics & the Nationjustice system is on trial,” said
Nasiy Nasir X, a leader of the
Minnesota-based Lion of Judah
Armed Forces, who walked
around the courthouse with an
assault-style rifle. “A nd the rea-
son why it’s on trial is our
beloved brother Ahmaud Arbery
was shot dead in the streets, like
he was an animal, by three White
vigilantes.”
While prosecutors have avoid-
ed explicit allegations of racial
bias in Arbery’s killing, issues of
race have pervaded the trial —
starting with jury selection,
when the defense struck all but
one Black person deemed quali-
fied to serve. The prosecution
protested, but the judge said
defense attorneys were able to
give “race-neutral” reasons for
their choices — leaving a panel
notably less diverse than the
community.
A defense attorney for Bryan,
Kevin Gough, unsuccessfully
pushed to bar “Black pastors”
from the courtroom, saying they
could influence jurors, and other
lawyers have expressed concerns
that the national conversation
about the trial would seep into
the legal case.
“This is what a public lynching
looks like in the 21st century,”
Gough said Friday as he made his
latest objection to demonstra-
tors outside the courthouse and
high-profile guests of Arbery’s
family in the courtroom.
Arbery’s mother and her law-
yer said late last week that
Gough sought an 11th-hour plea
deal for Bryan and that prosecu-
tors turned it down. Gough de-
nied the claim.
Florida defense lawyer Mark
O’Mara, who represented George
Zimmerman in the 2012 killing
of Trayvon Martin, said he sees
surface-level parallels to the case
of Zimmerman, who was fa-
mously acquitted in a case that
helped to launch the Black Lives
Matter movement. Many de-
nounced Zimmerman as a vigi-
lante who racially profiled,
chased and shot a Black 17-year-
old who was unarmed. Lawyers
for Zimmerman, who is Hispan-
ic, argued successfully that the
Florida man killed Martin in
self-defense after the teenager
attacked him.
But even before arguments
began, O’Mara said he thought a
panel of law professors would
vote to convict in Arbery’s killing
because they would view the
defendants as the “aggressors.”
He said pointing a shotgun at
someone constitutes an aggra-
vated assault.
“Did they see that he was
trespassing in some house...?
Great,” O’Mara said. “But even
that’s not the type of crime that
should lead to a citizen’s arrest
with firearms.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Knowles reported from Washington.
Margaret Coker in Brunswick, Ga.,
contributed to this report.have reacted the way he reacted,”
he said.
While the younger McMichael
pulled the trigger, Dunikoski ar-
gued that all three of the accused
played a crucial role in Arbery’s
killing by trapping him.
“Everybody is involved,” Dun-
ikoski said. “Everybody’s respon-
sible. That’s what the law says.”
Outside the Glynn County
courthouse Monday, residents
and demonstrators predicted an
uproar if the jury — 11 White
people and one Black man —
were to acquit the defendants.
“I think it would open the
flood gates to protests in a lot of
different places, and what that
protest brings is another ques-
tion,” said John Perry, pastor of
Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist
Church and the former head of
the Brunswick NAACP. He pre-
dicted “easily 10,0 00 people
gathering here.”
Members of Black gun rights
groups circled the courthouse
Monday, saying they were there
to protect demonstrators and
exercise their Second Amend-
ment rights. Musician and ac-
tivist Darrell Kelley and mem-
bers of the New Black Panther
Party brought a casket with a
fiberglass mannequin, which
bore the names of Black Ameri-
cans killed by police or in
confrontations with allegedly
racist motives.
“A merica right now... theirArbery grabbed his weapon but
testified that he fired when Ar-
bery struck him, grabbed his
shotgun and seemed poised to
overpower him.
“Use your common sense,”
Dunikoski t old the j ury repeated-
ly Monday, asking jurors at one
point: “Do you think all this was
completely made up for trial?”
Cellphone video shot by Bry-
an, which pushed the case into
the national spotlight, shows Ar-
bery running by the McMichaels’
truck and then toward Travis
McMichael. They struggle on-
camera, but the vehicle blocks
them as the first shot rings out. A
medical examiner found that
Arbery was shot at contact or
near-contact range.
The defendants are charged
with aggravated assault, false
imprisonment and two kinds of
murder: malice murder, which
involves intent to kill, and felo-
ny murder, which involves a
felony that causes someone’s
death. Defense attorneys said
Monday that their clients never
set out to kill Arbery and did n ot
cause the final violent confron-
tation.
Jason Sheffield, a lawyer for
Travis McMichael, described his
client Monday as a father and
former Coast Guard officer who
wanted to protect a community
on edge about crime. “If this was
a case about wanting to murder a
Black jogger... Travis would notalso said he saw Arbery at the
property on the night of Feb. 11,
202 0, and reported the encoun-
ter to police.
Arbery was never seen taking
anything from the property, but
Travis McMichael said he heard
things went missing from a boat
there and wanted to stop the
intruder for police. He testified
that his suspicions grew as Ar-
bery ran away from him on Feb.
23, 2020, never speaking.
Georgia’s law on citizen’s ar-
rest, which has been overhauled
since Arbery’s death, required
“immediate knowledge” of a
crime or “reasonable and proba-
ble grounds of suspicion” of
someone fleeing a felony offense.
Dunikoski, who will give her
final rebuttal Tuesday morning,
acknowledged that Arbery had
entered the unfinished home
unauthorized. But she called him
nothing more than a “looky-loo,”
saying that trespassing — a mis-
demeanor — would not legally
justify the defendants’ actions.
She noted that Travis McMichael
did not tell police about the
alleged thefts from a boat that he
said bolstered his belief Arbery
was a burglar.
Dunikoski urged skepticism of
Travis McMichael’s testimony
last week, which differed from
his early statements to police on
several key points. The younger
McMichael told police last year
that he was not sure whetherbe “unpopular” and argued that
he died because he “chose to
fight” — running toward Travis
McMichael and his shotgun in
the viral video at the heart of the
case. Dunikoski likened the de-
fendants to school bullies who
trapped and threatened their
victim and then tried to claim
self-defense when, outnum-
bered, Arbery finally pushed
back.
“What did Mr. Arbery do?”
Dunikoski said. “He ran away.
For five minutes.”
Jurors’ verdicts on those argu-
ments will carry even more
weight after the acquittal last
week of Kyle Rittenhouse, a
White t eenager who told a jury in
Kenosha, Wis., that he was pro-
tecting himself when he shot two
men and wounded a third amid
unrest that followed the police
shooting of a Black man.
For some, the Rittenhouse ver-
dict stoked fears about White
vigilantism — and raised ques-
tions about who gets to claim
self-defense. Activists say acquit-
tals for the men who confronted
Arbery could deepen beliefs that
the justice system cuts breaks to
White men with guns.
The McMichaels have said
they recognized Arbery from
surveillance footage of an un-
der-construction home that Ar-
bery entered several times in
the months leading up to the
shooting. Travis McMichaelBY TIM CRAIG
AND HANNAH KNOWLESbrunswick, ga. — In her final
pitch for one of the three men
charged with murder in the kill-
ing of Ahmaud Arbery, a defense
lawyer said Monday that Arbery
was to blame, “running away
instead of facing the conse-
quences” and “making terrible,
unexpected, illogical choices.”
Prosecutors, who have called
defendants Travis McMichael,
his father, Greg McMichael, and
their neighbor William “Roddie”
Bryan dangerous vigilantes, used
some of their strongest language
yet to suggest A rbery was racially
profiled.
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski
told jurors in her closing argu-
ment that the three White men,
who chased Arbery in pickup
trucks, jumped to conclusions
about the unarmed 25-year-old
“because he was a Black man
running down the street.”
Attorney Laura Hogue, who
represents Greg McMichael, fo-
cused on Arbery’s actions in
February 2020. The defense has
argued its clients had solid rea-
son to suspect Arbery of burglary
and seemed to allude Monday to
the criminal record that a judge
had ruled irrelevant and inad-
missible — speaking of a teen-
ager who would “deteriorate and
lose his way.”
Arbery’s mother, Wanda Coo-
per-Jones, left the courtroom
after Hogue 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.
“Wow,” Cooper-Jones said, be-
fore bolting from her seat and
briefly leaving.
Arbery’s killing in coastal
Georgia — in a suburban neigh-
borhood a couple miles from his
home — went without arrests
for more than two months last
year. A previous prosecutor said
the defendants were attempting
a legitimate citizen’s arrest
when Travis McMichael shot
Arbery in self-defense. Then
leaked video of the incident
sparked protests and national
demands for consequences,
shortly before the police killing
of George Floyd ignited a larger
racial justice movement.
Jurors heard closing argu-
ments Monday after 10 days of
witness testimony in a case that
many view as a test of the justice
system’s regard for Black lives.
Hogue anticipated that her
comments about Arbery would
Defense says Arbery to blame for own death in closing
Defendants killed him
‘because he was a Black
man,’ prosecutors sayJOSHUA LOTT/THE WASHINGTON POST
Protesters rally near the Glynn County courthouse in Brunswick, Ga., during closing arguments for the three White men charged with
murder in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. Prosecutors used some of their strongest language yet to suggest Arbery was racially profiled.NO paymentsand0% interestfor18 monthsNeverPaint Again!Payments as low as $159 monthly.
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