Defense challenges Jackson’s Ga. trial visit
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — A judge denied mistrial requests Monday at the trial of three white men charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery after defense attorneys claimed jurors were tainted by weeping from the gallery where the slain Black man’s parents sat with the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
The morning’s testimony was largely disrupted by arguments outside the jury’s presence over Jackson’s appearance. The judge said he found one defense lawyer’s complaints last week about Black pastors to be “reprehensible” and no group would be excluded from his courtroom.
Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael pursued the 25-year-old after spotting him running in their neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020. Their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan joined the chase and took video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery.
Tensions flared Monday soon after Jackson sat in the back row of the courtroom between Arbery’s parents. Defense attorney Kevin Gough asked the judge to make Jackson leave to avoid unfairly influencing the jury.
Gough, an attorney for Bryan, also complained last week when the Rev. Al Sharpton joined Arbery’s mother, Wanda CooperJones, and father, Marcus Arbery Sr., inside the Glynn County courtroom. Gough told the judge Thursday “we don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here.”
“There is no reason for these prominent icons in the civil rights movement to be here,” Gough said Monday. “With all due respect, I would suggest, whether intended or not, that inevitably a juror is going to be influenced by their presence in the courtroom.”
Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley declined the request. Courtrooms are generally open to the public, although the judge has limited seating in the public gallery because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The court is not going to single out any particular individual or group of individuals as not being allowed into his courtroom as a member of the public,” Walmsley said.
Jackson told reporters outside the courthouse that he came to Brunswick to support justice for Arbery’s family, not in response to the attorney’s remarks about Black pastors.
“As the judge said, it was my constitutional right to be there,” Jackson said. “It’s my moral obligation to be there.”
Gough’s mistrial request was joined by the two other defense teams. Jason Sheffield, one of Travis McMichaels’ attorneys, said the weeping caused some jurors to look and see Jackson, an icon “whose autographed picture hung in my mother’s law office for decades.”