Anyone watching the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial?

captainmorgan said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1458872267371393027

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hanimmal said:

Holy fuck.
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BodegaBud said:

Wasn’t he trespassing or breaking into a house? I don’t know the details of this one but it depends on who you are asking.

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ATLANTA (AP) — Travis and Greg McMichael said they armed themselves and sped after Ahmaud Arbery because they thought he was a burglar, and they wanted to catch him and hold him until police arrived.

When the 25-year-old Black man turned and fought during the chase, they said, Travis McMichael shot him in self-defense.

That’s what the defense maintains in the trial of three white men accused in the killing of Arbery, who was shot three times in February 2020 near Brunswick, on the Georgia coast. The McMichaels, a father and son, and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan are charged with murder and other crimes.

The defense strategy depends on Georgia’s citizen’s arrest and self-defense laws.

WHAT DOES THE DEFENSE SAY HAPPENED?

Greg McMichael, 65, told police he saw Arbery “hauling ass” past his house and believed he had committed burglaries nearby. McMichael ran inside, grabbed a handgun and shouted to his son, who emerged with a shotgun.

The two men jumped in a pickup truck and pursued Arbery through their subdivision. Arbery was on foot.

Seeing the chase in progress, Bryan climbed into his own pickup and recorded video on his cellphone as he joined the pursuit.

Bryan, 52, told an investigator he used his truck several times to block Arbery and edge him off the road. Greg McMichael told police he shouted at Arbery to stop.

At the end, Bryan’s video shows Greg McMichael in the bed of his pickup truck with a handgun and Travis McMichael, 35, outside the truck with a shotgun.

Defense attorneys say Arbery lunged toward Travis McMichael and his gun, and that’s when Travis McMichael shot him.

WHAT IS A CITIZEN’S ARREST?

Greg McMichael told a police officer they chased Arbery to keep him from leaving the subdivision. He said they wanted “to hold him” until police could “come and you know, check him out.”

A state law on the books at the time said: “A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.”

The actual words “citizen’s arrest” didn’t appear in the statute, and there was no obligation for a person who was trying to detain someone to declare that intention. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation mostly repealing the law in May.

Arbery had appeared several times on security video inside a house under construction near the McMichaels’ house.

Travis McMichael had seen him outside the house about two weeks earlier and feared Arbery was reaching for a gun that night when he reached toward his pocket, Robert Rubin, an attorney for McMichael said in his opening statement.

Arbery’s behavior at the unfinished house would cause a reasonable person to believe a crime had been committed, Rubin said. That’s also why the McMichaels felt they needed to arm themselves, he said.

Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said during her opening statement that Arbery was unarmed and gave the men no reason to suspect him of wrongdoing. They just assumed he had committed a crime, she said.

Melissa Redmon, a former prosecutor and now a law professor at the University of Georgia, said it could be a “hard sell” to convince a jury there was probable cause to initiate a citizen’s arrest.

“That’s based on what it appears they knew at the moment they confronted Mr. Arbery or, rather, the lack of information they had at the moment they confronted Mr. Arbery,” she said.

HOW DID ARBERY’S KILLING LEAD TO THE LAW’S REPEAL?

The citizen’s arrest law was approved in 1863 to round up escaped slaves and was later used to justify the lynching of Black people.

There had long been a push to repeal it. Arbery’s shooting broadened a national outcry over racial injustice and prompted state lawmakers to act.

The repeal legislation says witnesses and bystanders can’t detain people. Restaurant and shop employees can still detain people they believe stole something or who leave without paying. Licensed security guards and private detectives can also detain people.

Deadly force can’t be used to detain someone unless it’s in self-protection, protecting a home, or preventing a forcible felony.

Though the repeal law has taken effect, the defense is able to cite the old law since it was in effect at the time of Arbery’s slaying.

WHAT CONSTITUTES SELF-DEFENSE?

It is tragic that Arbery died, Rubin said. “But at that point, Travis McMichael is acting in self-defense. He did not want to encounter Ahmaud Arbery physically. He was only trying to stop him for the police,” Rubin said.

Georgia law allows the use of deadly force if a person reasonably believes another person is about to kill or gravely injure him or someone else. There’s no obligation to retreat first, as Georgia recognizes a person’s right to “stand your ground.”

But Georgia law does not allow someone to use force if he is the aggressor, unless he withdraws from the fight and effectively communicates that, and the other person continues to use or threaten to use force against him.

When he raised the shotgun, Travis McMichael was hoping to “de-escalate the situation,” but Arbery turned toward McMichael “swinging aggressively” with his fists, Rubin said. McMichael shot him out of fear that Arbery would get the gun and shoot him or his dad, Rubin said.

Prosecutors will likely argue Arbery was allowed to defend himself against a man who had been chasing him and was pointing a gun at him, Redmon said. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent said during a June hearing that he believed Arbery acted in self-defense.

Ultimately, the jury will have to consider the moments before the shotgun blasts rang out and decide which man was the aggressor and therefore not legitimately acting in self-defense, Redmon said.

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Budley Doright said:

He was a black man that stopped in to look at a house under construction. Better shoot the MFer before he steals a 2x4. MAGA!

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doublejj said:

or worse, he likes what he see's & buys or builds a house in your neighborhood....

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hanimmal said:

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Budley Doright said:

Well that clears a lot up. Black man running away not obeying the white folks command to stop, all while they chase him with guns. He gets shot ……… oh wells, should have done what those white folks told him to do, case closed! You need to issue more guns so these black thieves are brought to justice (shot in the street). MAGA.

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BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Defense attorneys rested their case in the Ahmaud Arbery trial Thursday after calling just seven witnesses, including the shooter, who testified that Arbery did not threaten him in any way before he pointed his shotgun at the 25-year-old Black man.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley scheduled closing arguments in the trial for Monday, setting up the possibility of verdicts before Thanksgiving for the three white men charged with murder in Arbery’s death.

Under cross-examination by the prosecution on his second day of testimony, Travis McMichael said that Arbery hadn’t shown a weapon or spoken to him at all before McMichael raised his shotgun. But, McMichael said, he was “under the impression” that Arbery could be a threat because he was running straight at him and he had seen Arbery trying to get into the truck of a neighbor who had joined in a pursuit of Arbery in their coastal Georgia neighborhood.

“All he’s done is run away from you,” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said. “And you pulled out a shotgun and pointed it at him.”

Cellphone video from the Feb. 23, 2020, shooting — replayed in court Thursday — shows Arbery running around the back of McMichael’s pickup truck after McMichael first points the shotgun while standing next to the open driver’s side door. Arbery then runs around the passenger side as McMichael moves to the front and the two come face to face. After that, the truck blocks any view of them until the first gunshot sounds.

McMichael’s testimony Wednesday marked the first time any of the three defendants has spoken publicly about the killing. The other two defendants did not testify. McMichael said Arbery forced him to make a split-second “life-or-death” decision by attacking him and grabbing his shotgun.

MORE ON ARBERY TRIAL
Defense attorneys rest their cases at Arbery death trial
Black pastors rally outside trial over Arbery's killing
EXPLAINER: What are the charges in Ahmaud Arbery's killing?
Man who shot Arbery testifies: 'He had my gun. He struck me'

Dunikoski noted Thursday that’s not what McMichael told police in an interview about two hours after the shooting occurred.

“So you didn’t shoot him because he grabbed the barrel of your shotgun,” Dunikoski said. “You shot him because he came around that corner and you were right there and you just pulled the trigger immediately.”

“No, I was struck,” McMichael replied. “We were face to face, I’m being struck and that’s when I shot.”

McMichael said he had approached Arbery because neighbors indicated something had happened down the road and he wanted to ask Arbery about it. Arbery was running in the Brunswick neighborhood at the time. He said Arbery stopped, then took off running when McMichael told him police were on the way.

Asked how many times he had previously pulled up behind strangers in the neighborhood to ask them what they were doing there, McMichael said never.

“You know that no one has to talk to anyone they don’t want to talk to, right?” Dunikoski said.

The prosecutor also pressed McMichael on why he didn’t include some details of his testimony Wednesday in his written statement to police, namely the part about his telling Arbery police were on the way.

McMichael said he was “under stress, nervous, scared” at the time of his police interview and “probably being choppy.”

“What were you nervous about?” Dunikoski asked.

“I just killed a man,” McMichael responded. “I had blood on myself. It was the most traumatic event of my life.”

“You were nervous because you thought you were going to jail, right?” Dunikoski asked.

“No. I gave them a statement,” McMichael said.

McMichael and his father, Greg McMichael, armed themselves and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck after he ran past their home from the house under construction. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the chase in his own truck and recorded cellphone video. Arbery’s killing deepened a national outcry over racial injustice after the video leaked online.

Defense attorneys have argued that their clients were lawfully trying to stop burglaries in their neighborhood and that McMichael opened fire in self-defense. Prosecutors say there’s no justification for what the men did and no evidence that Arbery had committed any crimes.

Six neighbors testified Thursday about sharing reports of property crimes and suspicious people on their subdivision’s Facebook page. Brook Perez said one neighbor’s 2019 post about a car break-in prompted her to check her husband’s truck and discover some of his tools missing.

“I’m home by myself with the kids,” Perez said. “So it just felt like a violation.”

Outside the Glynn County courthouse, hundreds of pastors gathered, while a defense lawyer renewed his bid to keep Black ministers out of the courtroom. The Rev. Jesse Jackson again joined Arbery’s family in the courtroom, as he had on some other days this week. Walmsley declined to take the issue up again, noting he’d already rejected the same motion from Bryan attorney Kevin Gough twice.

Gough first asked the judge last week to remove the Rev. Al Sharpton from the court, saying the civil rights activist was trying to influence the disproportionately white jury. He also has complained that activists outside the courthouse are trying to influence the jury with banners and signs, and likewise objected to the pastors’ rally.

“We had a huge protest at lunchtime that was so loud, with bullhorns literally 20 feet from the front door of this courthouse, that you could literally hear what was being said at the doors of this courtroom,” Gough told the judge.

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he defense attorney for William 'Roddie' Bryan has spent the overwhelming majority of the Ahmaud Arbery trial complaining about people of color in the courtroom and protesting outside the courtroom.

Speaking to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Monday evening, former federal prosecutor Charles Coleman, defense lawyer Kevin Gough may be trying to plant a seed in the head of someone marginally racist in an effort to score a hung jury.

"Well, from the technical aspect of the trial what you're looking at is the defense attorney attempting to create a record for appeal," Coleman explained. "What he is trying to do is basically put on the record anything that he can around this issue in order to try to preserve that record so that when and if his client is convicted he will have an appeal. But I think there's a broader conversation to be had. Ultimately when the facts are not on your side you resort to these sorts of tactics as a hail Mary to appeal to the lowest common denominator of what you see in that jury."

He noted that a key understanding for trial attorneys is understanding the audience. That's why he's trying to use dog whistles.

"People have to understand, one of the first rules of being a trial attorney is understanding your audience," he continued. "You have to know your audience. And at this point what you have seen from the defense attorneys, not just Mr. Gough but also will George McMichael's defense attorney today, is the decision to put down the whispering and the dog whistle and pick up the bullhorn. And that's what you saw when you saw Jordan McMichael's defense attorney today literally make references to Ahmaud Arbery that described him almost as though he were a runaway slave."

He noted that it's a sense of white entitlement that has extended into the actual merits of the case.

"I believe that they are aiming to actually trigger something that is latent within one of the jurors so that they can get somebody who's a holdout and ultimately get a hung jury," Coleman concluded. "Because it's important to remember they only need one. They don't need everybody to be on the same page. They just need one for a hung jury and he walks."

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