Three guilty in Georgia murder of Black jogger
Suspects’ video leaked to press proved decisive
BRUNSWICK, GA. • Three white men were convicted of murder on Wednesday for chasing and shooting a Black man named Ahmaud Arbery as he ran in their neighbourhood, with a Georgia jury rejecting a self-defence claim in a trial that once again probed America’s divisive issues of race and guns.
The verdict was delivered by the jury, consisting of one Black man and 11 white men and women, after about a two-week trial in the coastal city of Brunswick in a case that hinged on whether the defendants had a right to confront the unarmed 25-year-old avid jogger last year on a hunch he was fleeing a crime.
Gregory Mcmichael, 65, his son Travis Mcmichael, 35, and their neighbour William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, were charged with murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal intent to commit a felony. They face a minimum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Jurors reached their verdict on the second day of deliberations. Earlier on Wednesday, they asked to have two important pieces of evidence — cellphone video of Arbery being fatally shot and a 911 call made by Greg Mcmichael moments before the shooting telling an operator that “there’s a Black male running down the street” — played back for them.
There was never any dispute that the younger Mcmichael fired his pumpaction shotgun three times at Arbery at close range on Feb. 23, 2020, in the suburban community of Satilla Shores.
It was captured on a graphic cellphone video made by Bryan, stoking outrage when it emerged more than two months later and the public learned that none of the three men had been arrested.
Lawyers for the Mcmichaels argued that the killing was justified after Arbery ran past the Mcmichaels’ driveway in a neighbourhood that had experienced a spate of property thefts.
Both Mcmichaels grabbed their guns and jumped in their pickup truck in pursuit, with Bryan, unarmed, joining moments later.
Prosecutors said the defendants had “assumed the worst” about a Black man out on a Sunday afternoon jog. He was chased by the defendants for about five minutes around the looping streets.
Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-jones, looked up appearing to mouth silent prayer in the courtroom as the judge prepared to read out the verdict. As the first guilty verdict was read aloud, she sobbed aloud: “Oh!”
Her head sunk into her chest as she wept, while Arbery’s father Marcus Arbery leaped up and cheered.
Outside the courthouse, a crowd of more than 100 people gathered and cheered yelling “justice”. The three men face a federal trial next year on hate-crime charges.