Tensions flare in Arbery death trial as Jackson visits
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 armed themselves and pursued the 25-year-old in a pickup truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020. Their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times with a shotgun.
Tensions flared in the courtroom soon after Jackson sat in the back row of the courtroom between Arbery’s parents. Defense attorney Kevin Gough asked the judge to make the civil rights leader 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 Cooper-Jones, 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. “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.”
A Connecticut judge found Infowars host Alex Jones liable by default in a defamation lawsuit brought by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting over the conspiracy theorist’s claims that the massacre was a hoax.
The ruling by the judge, who cited Jones’ refusal to abide by court rulings or turn over evidence, means a jury will determine how much in damages Jones should pay.
Shortly after the judge’s decision, Jones went on his show and said he’d been deprived of a fair trial.
“These individuals, again, are not allowing me to have a jury trial because they know the things they said I supposedly did didn’t happen,” he said. “They know they don’t have a case for damages. And so the judge is saying you are guilty of damages, now a jury decides how guilty you are. It’s not guilty until proven guilty.”
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said he
won’t seek reelection next year to the seat he’s held since 1975, signaling an end to a career that’s included major roles on issues such as civil liberties and financing the government and that began before four of his current colleagues were born.
“It’s time to come home,” said Leahy, 81. He made the announcement in the Vermont State House, blocks from where he grew up.
The decision by Leahy, 81, among the Senate’s more liberal members, marks the end of a political era. He’s the last of the so-called Watergate babies, the surge of congressional Democrats elected in 1974 after President Richard Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment.
He’s also among a dwindling group from a more collegial era when senators had more harmonious relationships despite ideological differences. Among those is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., now one of Congress’ sharpest partisans, who’s served alongside Leahy for over three decades and praised him warmly as “an all-time Senate institution.”
Leahy became the first Democrat facing reelection next year in the 50-50 Senate to say he’ll retire. His state has shifted from solidly Republican to deep blue while he’s been senator, and his seat seems securely in Democratic hands.
He chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, which injects him into this fall’s budget fight. He was chair or top Democrat on the Judiciary committee for two decades and was atop the Agriculture panel for 10 years. But inside the Capitol, he’s equally known as a photography buff who wanders the corridors with a camera slung around his neck and for shepherding around celebrities.
LONDON — British authorities raised the country’s threat level to its second-highest rung, after police said a blast in a taxi outside a Liverpool hospital was caused by a homemade bomb.
Investigators said they were treating Sunday’s explosion — which killed the suspected bombmaker and injured the cab driver — as a terrorist incident, but that the motive was unclear.
Counterterrorism police named the dead man as 32-year-old Emad Al Swealmeen. They did not give further details, though Britain’s Press Association news agency and other media reported that he had not been on the radar of the security services.
The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre raised the U.K. threat level from substantial — meaning an attack is likely — to severe, meaning it is highly likely, following the U.K.’s second fatal incident in a month.
The male passenger in a taxi was killed and the driver injured when a blast ripped through the vehicle as it pulled up outside the hospital on Sunday morning.