Attorney accuses Arbery advocates of ‘lynching’ defendants
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — The defense attorney who caused an outcry by saying Black pastors should be barred from the murder trial over Ahmaud Arbery’s death declared in court Friday that a courthouse rally supporting the slain Black man’s family was comparable to a “public lynching” of the three white defendants.
“This case has been infected by things that have nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of these defendants,” attorney Kevin Gough told the judge, arguing that civil rights activists are trying to influence the disproportionately white jury.
Gough renewed a request for a mistrial the day after the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III joined hundreds of pastors, most of them Black, praying and rallying at the steps of the Glynn County courthouse. The event was organized after Gough last week objected to Sharpton sitting in the back row of the courtroom with Arbery’s parents.
“This is what a public lynching looks like in the 21st century,” Gough told the judge, saying his client’s right to a fair trial was being violated by a “left woke mob.”
Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley dismissed the mistrial motion with little discussion.
“I don’t recall any disruption in the courtroom itself,” the judge said of Thursday’s rally, which coincided with defense testimony. Gough is the lead attorney for William “Roddie” Bryan, who joined father and son Greg and Travis McMichael in pursuing Arbery in pickup trucks after spotting the 25-year-old man running in their coastal Georgia neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020. Bryan took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery as he threw punches and grabbed for the shotgun.
Arbery’s killing later became part of the broader reckoning on racial injustice in the criminal legal system after a string of fatal encounters between Black people and police.
Gough has repeatedly raised concerns about outside activists seeking to influence the case. He made the lynching remark after prosecutor Linda Dunikoski accused Gough of intentionally provoking outrage among Black pastors and civil rights activists.
“They are responding to what he strategically, knowingly, intelligently did so that there would be a response so that he could then complain of it,” Dunikoski said.
Closing arguments are set for Monday
Blinken warning: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday called on African nations to heed warnings posed by crises in Ethiopia and Sudan, take seriously popular demands for better governance and enact reforms.
In a speech outlining the Biden administration’s policy toward the continent, Blinken said growing extremism, increasing authoritarianism and exploding corruption in Africa are imperiling democracy, human rights and the future of a massive portion of the world’s population.
Blinken delivered the message in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja, a day after telling Nigerian leaders and officials in Kenya the day before that the U.S. is looking to them for results, including setting examples for their Ethiopian and Sudanese counterparts.
“Authoritarianism is on the rise around the world,” he said in an address at the Abuja-based headquarters of the Economic Community of West African States regional bloc.
He cited threats to free speech and freedom of assembly that have been on the rise and that civilian governments in Africa have been toppled at least four
times this year.
Sequoias burn: Lightning-sparked wildfires killed thousands of giant sequoias this year, adding to a staggering two-year death toll that accounts for up to nearly a fifth of Earth’s largest trees, officials said Friday. Fires in Sequoia National Park and the surrounding national forest that also bears the trees’ name tore through more than a third of groves in California and torched an estimated 2,261 to 3,637 sequoias, which are the largest trees by volume. Fires in the same area last year killed an unprecedented 7,500 to 10,400 of the 75,000 trees that are only native in about 70 groves scattered along the western side of the Sierra Nevada range.
Intense fires that burned hot enough and high enough to kill so many giant sequoias — trees once considered nearly fire-proof — underline the impact of climate change.
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Friday formally declared “squaw” a derogatory term and said she is taking steps to remove it from federal government use and to replace other derogatory place names.
Haaland is ordering a federal panel tasked with naming geographic places to implement procedures to eliminate what she called racist terms from federal use. The decision provides momentum to a movement that has included the dismantling of other historical markers and monuments considered offensive across the country.
“Our nation’s lands and waters should be places to celebrate the outdoors and our shared cultural
Derogatory place names:
heritage — not to perpetuate the legacies of oppression,” Haaland said in a statement.
Under Haaland’s order, a federal task force will find replacement names for geographic features on federal lands bearing the term “squaw,” which has been used as a slur, particularly for Indigenous women. A database maintained by the Board on Geographic Names shows there are more than 650 federal sites with names that contain the term.
The first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency, Haaland is from Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico.
Europe migrants: Polish authorities said Friday there are no more migrants camping along the Belarus side of the European Union’s eastern border, but attempts at illegally crossing into the bloc’s territory are continuing and becoming more aggressive.
And Ukraine, which also borders Belarus, said it would build a border fence and ditch and hold military drills to forestall any attempted influx of migrants.
Around 50 migrants got through a fence into EU member Poland on Thursday, Anna Michalska, a spokeswoman for Poland’s Border Guard said. They included a family of five who said they wanted to stay in Poland, opening a procedure toward settlement. The others will have to return to Belarus, Michalska said.
Constitution auction: A rare first printing of the U.S. Constitution sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $43.2 million, a record price for a document or book sold at auction.
The buyer, hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin, will loan the document to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, for exhibition, Sotheby’s said Friday.