The Murder of Ahmaud Arbery
Our criminal jury system is, in theory at least, a model for the world. Twelve individual jurors must unanimously decide beyond a reasonable doubt to convict the accused who is entitled to a presumption of innocence and to protections against self-incrimination. Our practices, however, have too often fallen very far short of our ideals, particularly in cases involving criminal conduct of whites towards black men.
Ahmaud Arbery’s killers were convicted by a 12 person Brunswick, Georgia jury. He was black, and his killers were white. Eleven of the twelve jurors were white.
Mr. Arbery had been out for a jog in the middle of the day, and he briefly stopped to look in at a nearby house under construction. He was unarmed, and clad only on in his running shorts, t-shirt and running shoes. He had taken nothing from the construction site.
His killers were a retired police officer, his son, and one of their neighbors – the McMichael’s and William Bryan. The McMichaels decided he was suspicious; they tailed him; Bryan hit him several times with his pick-up truck; they trapped him between their vehicles, and when he resisted, Travis McMichael shot him three times with a shotgun. One of the killers (Bryan) recorded the scene on his cell phone.
When local police officers brought the case to the local District Attorney, a friend of the one of the accused, and to a second local District Attorney whose son was a friend of another of the accused; the District Attorneys recused and then declined to bring charges saying it was a justifiable homicide conducted in the course of a citizen’s arrest.
After several months of local controversy, an attorney for Gregory McMichael provided the cell phone video to the local TV station, which played it on air. At that point state law enforcement got involved, and the three men from the Satilla Shores neighborhood were promptly charged with murder.
When the case came to trial, their local defense attorneys challenged all but one of the black men and women who were called to jury duty. The judge noted their use of race in making their juror challenges, but said under Georgia law, there was nothing he could do about it. (NB. The US Supreme Court has barred prosecutors from using race-based peremptory challenges to achieve their preferred jury composition.) Defense counsel tried unsuccessfully to have black pastors removed from the public trial, and they argued that Arbery was the aggressor, a would-be burglar, and had dirty toenails as well. They tried to argue that three armed white men in pick-up trucks chasing a black jogger were engaged in self-defense, and they were making a citizen’s arrest for a crime that they did not see and had never even happened.
The jury convicted the three killers of Mr. Arbery. Travis McMichael was convicted on all nine counts, including malice murder and felony murder, Gregory McMichael was convicted on eight counts, including felony murder, and William Bryant was convicted on six counts, including felony murder. They all face life in prison but have not yet been sentenced.
The Brunswick District Attorney is facing felony and misdemeanor charges for her role in seeking to protect the defendants, rather than the victim’s family. She was defeated in her recent bid for re-election. The Georgia legislature passed a hate crimes enhancement bill, which in the past had been defeated in the Georgia state Senate or been found unconstitutional by the Georgia Supreme Court. The Georgia legislature repealed the state’s post-Civil War citizen’s arrest legislation, which the murderers had sought to invoke in their defense.
This time and despite all the obstacles, justice was done, yet a 25-year-old avid jogger is dead at the hands of local vigilantes. Without the camera video and the community outrage, they would likely have gone free. We should appreciate the skill and diligence of the ultimate prosecutors, investigators, police officers, jurors and presiding judge who brought the case to a just culmination for Mr. Arbery’s family.
Refences:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/ahmaud-arbery-verdict-guilty/620817/
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/24/uncomfortable-truths-ahmaud-arbery-verdict-523374
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/29/podcasts/the-daily/ahmaud-arbery-prosecution-conviction.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery