Discussions of race are notably absent in trial

BRUNSWICK, GA. >> When Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-yearold Black man, was chased through a Georgia neighborhood by three White men and shot at close range, his killing was widely viewed as an act of racial violence.

One of the men uttered a racist slur moments after shooting Arbery, one of his co-defendants told authorities. One of the trucks the men were in had a vanity plate with a Confederate flag symbol on it.

And yet over 10 days of testimony in a South Georgia courtroom, jurors heard no discussion of race or allegations of bigotry. Prosecutors largely shied away from the issue, despite chances to ask about it as they presented their case.

The absence has been notable, given that prosecutors signaled early on that they might make race an important aspect of their case.

On Thursday, Linda Dunikoski, the lead prosecutor, asked permission to tell the jury about the claim that Travis McMichael had used a racist slur, an allegation that McMichael’s lawyers have contested. Dunikoski faced significant legal hurdles in getting such evidence introduced. But before the judge could rule on the matter, the defense rested its case, and she declined her right to present rebuttal witnesses after hours of cross-examining McMichael. Still, the absence of any overt discussion about race in court surprised legal experts and sparked disagreements over the wisdom of a prosecution strategy that might have been influenced by the fact that 11 of the 12 jurors are

White.

“I’m at a loss,” Esther Panitch, a legal analyst and longtime Atlanta-based criminal defense lawyer, said Thursday. “While the state doesn’t have the obligation to prove motivation, jurors certainly would want to know what would motivate defendants to commit a crime like this.”

The state murder trial, which is unfolding in the small coastal city of Brunswick, close to the site of the shooting, is not the last word on whether the defendants McMichael; his father, Gregory McMichael; and their neighbor William Bryan were motivated by racial animus: A federal hate crimes trial looms for all three men in February.

But in Brunswick in recent days, the gulf between the limited story presented in court and the broader story being told beyond earshot of the jurors seemed to yawn wider than ever.

Kevin Gough, the lawyer for Bryan, has repeatedly introduced race into the public narrative by arguing that the presence of prominent civil rights leaders in the courtroom, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III, could influence the jury. “We don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here,” he said at one juncture. Gough, following the rules of the court, has always made those comments while the jury was out of the room.

He was joined this week by Jason Sheffield, a lawyer for Travis McMichael, who said the jurors needed to be shielded from the “national conversation.”

Gough’s comments were widely criticized and prompted Sharpton’s National Action Network to invite scores of Black pastors to Brunswick.