Arbery jurors deliberate 6 hours with no verdict
Prosecutor: Pursuers had ‘no authority’
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Jurors in the case of three white men charged with killing Ahmaud Arbery deliberated for about six hours Tuesday without reaching a verdict as they weighed prosecution arguments that the defendants provoked the fatal confrontation against defense attorneys’ insistence that their clients acted in self-defense.
The jurors were dismissed by the judge with instructions to resume deliberations Wednesday morning.
After more than two weeks of testimony and closing arguments, the prosecution got the last word because it carries the burden of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski spent two hours Tuesday morning hammering at defense attorneys’ attempts to blame the 25-yearold Black man for his own death. Defense attorneys said Arbery lashed out violently with his fists to resist a lawful citizen’s arrest by the defendants.
“You can’t claim self-defense if you are the unjustified aggressor,” Linda Dunikoski told jurors in her final statement. “Who started this? It wasn’t Ahmaud Arbery.”
Dunikoski said Arbery’s pursuers had “no badge, no uniform, no authority” and were “just some strange guys in a white pickup truck.” And she cited their own words to police immediately after the shooting, when they said they saw Arbery running, but were unsure if he had committed a crime.
“You can’t make a citizen’s arrest because someone’s running down the street and you have no idea what they did wrong,” Dunikoski said.
Once the prosecution wrapped up, Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley instructed the disproportionately white jury on how to apply the law before the panel started deliberations at the Glynn County courthouse in the port city of Brunswick.
Arbery’s killing became part of a larger national reckoning on racial injustice after a graphic video of his death leaked online two months later.
Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael grabbed guns and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck after seeing him running through their subdivision on Feb. 23, 2020. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the chase and recorded video of Travis McMichael opening fire as Arbery threw punches and grabbed for McMichael’s shotgun.
No one was charged in the killing until Bryan’s video leaked and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. All three men are charged with murder and other offenses.
Dunikoski noted that Bryan told police he used his truck to run Arbery into a ditch and cut off his route, while Greg McMichael told officers they had him “trapped like a rat.” The actions of both men, she said, directly contributed to Arbery’s death.
“It doesn’t matter who actually pulled the trigger,” Dunikoski said. “Under the law, they’re all guilty.”