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Protesters rally outside the Glynn County Courthouse on Nov. 24 in Brunswick, Ga., after jurors found three White men gu ilty of murder
in the trial over the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. The men a re now awaiting a decision from jurors in a high-stakes trial.BY DAVID NAKAMURA
The three White men who
chased Ahmaud Arbery in a con-
frontation that led to his death
were motivated by “racial as-
sumptions, racial resentment and
racial anger” because he was
Black, a government prosecutor
said Monday during closing argu-
ments in the high-stakes federal
hate-crimes trial.
Defense lawyers acknowledged
that Gregory McMichael, 66, Trav-
is McMichael, 36, and William
“Roddie” Bryan, 52, had a history
of spouting racially derogatory re-
marks. But they told jurors the
three men were trying to stop and
question Arbery not because of
his race, but because the McMi-
chaels suspected him of trespass-
ing several times at a n eighbor’s
property in their coastal Georgia
subdivision.
The clashing narratives were
presented to the 12-member jury
as the trial neared conclusion af-
ter six days in which the govern-
ment called 20 witnesses who tes-
tified that the three men had
made racist statements in text
messages, social media posts and
conversations. Jurors began de-
liberating Monday afternoon and
adjourned before 6 p.m., with
plans to reconvene Tuesda y
morning.
The case represents the first
time defendants are facing hate-
crimes charges in one of three
high-profile killings of Black vic-tims that sparked nationwide so-
cial justice protests in 2020.
Prosecutors said the evidence
demonstrated that the men were
predisposed to erroneously as-
sume Arbery was a threat and a
criminal when Travis McMichael
fatally shot him almost exactly
two years ago, on Feb. 23, 2020.
Arbery, whose family has said he
was out jogging, was wearing
shorts and a T-shirt and was not
carrying any belongings — not
even a cellphone, authorities have
said.
Summing up the government’s
case, Justice Department pros-
ecutor Christopher Perras said
the McMichaels and Bryan made
racial assumptions when they
chased Arbery in pickup trucks
and threatened him with guns as
Arbery ran on a public street in
the Satilla Shores subdivision.
“They chose to act on that as-
sumption when they hunted Ah-
maud down like an animal and
shot him and let him die on the
streets like an animal,” Perras
said. He asked the jury — made up
of eight White people, three Black
people and one Hispanic person
— to “hold these men accountable
not only for what they did, but for
why they did it.”
But the defense team argued
that the McMichaels and Bryan
were trying to stop and question
Arbery because they suspected
him of alleged trespassing and
other crimes in the weeks leading
up to the killing. A man later
identified as Arbery was spotted
several times on surveillance vid-
eo at an under-construction
house in the neighborhood. Gov-
ernment lawyers have said Arbery
had jogged through the neighbor-
hood multiple times, including on
the day of his killing, and saidthere is no evidence he stole any-
thing or vandalized property.
On Monday, Amy Lee Cope-
land, representing Travis McMi-
chael, acknowledged to jurors
that many of her client’s racially
derogatory messages and social
media posts were offensive. But
she noted that the comments
were made in private, to like-
minded people.
By contrast, she said, Travis did
not use such racist language when
he called police on Feb. 11, 2020, to
report seeing a man, later identi-
fied as Arbery, at the under-con-
struction house, or in his state-
ments to police investigators after
the fatal shooting.
She described the McMichaels
as being on alert about reports of
rising crime, noting that Greg Mc-
Michael had contacted police to
report seeing a man living under a
bridge. And she reminded jurors
that a former colleague of Travis
McMichael, who testified that he
had berated her for dating a Black
man, also had said it was just like
him to “take the law into his own
hands rather than call 911” — sug-
gesting that it showed the young-
er McMichael was motivated by
vigilantism, rather than race.
“The government hasn’t
proved beyond a reasonable
doubt that race was a motivating
factor,” Copeland said.
The McMichaels and Bryan, al-
ready convicted of murder in state
court and sentenced to life in
prison, are accused in the federal
case of intimidating and interfer-
ing with Arbery’s right to use a
public street because of his race,
which is a hate crime, and of
attempted kidnapping. The Mc-
Michaels also face additional
counts of using a firearms in a
violent crime.Courtroom benches were filled
Monday with Arbery’s parents
and family members, including
their legal representatives. Grego-
ry McMichael’s wife, Leigh, who is
Travis’s mother, also was present,
along with a family friend, and
spoke quietly to a local religious
leader during the morning break.
Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s
mother, sobbed quietly behind a
KN95 mask as the prosecution
ran down the list of names the
defendants used against Black
people, including “subhuman sav-
ages,” the n-word and “monkeys.”
Jurors were recruited from a
wide swath of Georgia and have
been sequestered throughout the
trial, spending nights at a h otel
rather than driving hundreds of
miles home. Some live as far away
as Augusta, a 3^12 -ho ur drive north
of Glynn County, and Dublin,
northeast along the freeway to
Atlanta. One reason the trial con-
vened on a federal holiday Mon-
day was to minimize the length of
time the jurors would be away
from their families and jobs.
In his closing, Perras empha-
sized that the government does
not need to prove the men were
motivated by their hatred of Black
people, but rather that Arbery’s
race played a role in a crime that
would not have taken place if he
were not Black. Perras said the
men had made statements specu-
lating that other crimes were
committed by Black people, de-
spite evidence to the contrary.
On the day of Arbery’s death, all
three men “saw a y oung Black
man in their neighborhood and
thought the worst of him — as-
sumed he was a criminal,” Perras
said. “You know in your heads and
your hearts that this crime oc-
curred because of race.”
A.J. Balbo, a lawyer for Gregory
McMichael, said his client was
motivated to chase Arbery be-
cause the young man matched the
description of the person seen in
the surveillance video at the un-
der-construction house.
“If he sees an African American
man who was bald, 6 feet 6, 350
pounds, mid-40s with no tattoos
and, instead of a two-to-three-
inch haircut, has a six-inch mo-
hawk — if that’s who runs past,
does Greg McMichael put aside
his boat cushions to follow that
person?” Balbo said. “No. No, he
doesn’t.”
Pete Theodocion, Bryan’s law-
yer, sought to distance his client
from the McMichaels, emphasiz-
ing that Bryan did not know who
Arbery was or why the McMi-
chaels were chasing him when he
joined the pursuit in his own
truck. Bryan, who was unarmed,
heard the McMichaels trying to
stop Arbery, Theodocion said. He
made an assumption that Arbery
must have done something wrong
because of the commotion, the
lawyer argued, not because he
was Black.
Though the prosecution had
presented evidence that Bryan
had objected days before the
shooting to his daughter dating a
Black man, Theodocion said his
client was “not obsessed by race.”
“We can hate these opinions;
we can be repulsed by them,” the
lawyer said of his client’s views of
Black people. “But he has not
shown, through this evidence,
that he has a hatred of African
Americans or a want of violence to
be caused to them or a joy of
violence happening to them. He’s
not one of those people.”Margaret Coker in Brunswick, Ga.,
contributed to this report.A rbery’s killers await verdict in hate-crimes trial
Jury deliberations begin
in case weighing whether
race played a roleRetropolis
The past, rediscovered
wpost.com/retropolisS0364 1x1.
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