Crime & Safety
Ahmaud Arbery Case: Closing Arguments Loom, Attorney Calls Black Pastors Rally A Lynching
The defense called a rally by Black pastors in support of the slain Ahmaud Arbery a "public lynching." A mistrial request was denied.
BRUNSWICK, GA — Closing arguments will begin Monday morning in the murder trials of the three white men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery in 2020. Prosecutors have focused on testimony from the shooter that the unarmed Arbery, a Black jogger, presented no threat, while defense attorneys have argued their clients acted under the state's citizen's arrest law.
A jury of 11 white residents and one Black member will decide the case. Prosecutors and defense attorneys spent Friday debating the legal instructions the Judge Timothy Walmsley plans to give to the jury before deliberations.
Much of the debate dealt with how the judge will describe the limitations on making a citizen’s arrest. Defense attorneys say Georgia law authorized father and son Greg and Travis McMichael, along with their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., to detain Arbery because they had valid reason to suspect he was a burglar.
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Prosecutors say there’s no evidence that Arbery had committed any crimes in the neighborhood.
Defense attorneys objected when the judge said he would instruct the jury that “a private citizen’s warrantless arrest must occur immediately after the perpetration of the offense, or in the case of a felony during escape.”
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Robert Rubin, an attorney for Travis McMichael, said the proposed language would make it virtually impossible for a jury to find the defendants had probable cause to detain Arbery based on suspicion he’d committed prior burglaries in same home under construction he was seen running from before his death.
“We have built this whole case around the probable cause ... that Travis McMichael and Greg McMichael had on Feb. 23 for events that happened previously,” Rubin said. “And you are gutting all of it.”
Travis McMichael testified this week that he had seen security camera videos of Arbery inside the unfinished home and he spotted Arbery “creeping” outside of it 12 days before the shooting. None of the five videos of Arbery inside the home showed him stealing. The owner said he installed cameras after items were taken from a boat he kept in an open garage.
Walmsley said he would consider changes if attorneys could support them citing other cases.
Four times during the nearly two-week long trial, a defense attorney has complained in court about the presence of Black ministers and demanded a mistrial because of them.
A day after hundreds of Black pastors descended upon the Glynn County Courthouse for a lunchtime prayer rally and march through Brunswick, Kevin Gough said his client, Bryan, could not get a fair trial claiming the clergy created inherent prejudice for the jury, witnesses and even the judge.
“Just because they haven’t put a podium up with a hangman’s noose, doesn’t mean this isn’t a trial that’s been infected by the woke left mob,” Gough said in his complaint to Judge Walmsley. “This is what a public lynching looks like in the 21st century.”
See Also: Black Pastors Rally For Justice, Pray Outside Arbery Trial
A former top public defender whose firing five years ago was condemned by the local NAACP chapter, Gough is known in legal circles for pushing the envelope if he thinks it will benefit his client.
“I’m entirely not shocked at all by what everybody’s been shocked about. It's just classic Kevin Gough,” said Wes Wolfe, who covered Gough as a courts reporter for The Brunswick News from 2016 to 2020.
Gough is not above creating a spectacle, Wolfe said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It doesn’t seem to matter to him that it rubs people the wrong way, and it doesn’t seem to bother him that judges get irritated,” Wolfe said.
Gough's client Bryan is on trial with Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory McMichael, facing murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment charges, among others, in connection with the Feb. 23, 2020 shooting death of Arbery. Invoking citizen’s arrest after the fact in belief that he was a burglar and ultimately claiming self-defense, the three men chased the Black 25-year-old in trucks as he ran, corralled him and shot him.
Friday, out of site of a jury that had been dismissed until Monday after defense attorneys rested their collective cases on Thursday, both sides met with Walmsley to negotiate the language of the charges and review motions.
That’s when Gough’s motion came up.
“The argument is that it is inherent prejudice,” he said. “Now, this is not 1915 and this is not 1923. There are not 1000s of people outside with pitchforks in baseball backs. But I would respectfully submit to the court that this is the 21st-century equivalent.”
Where attorneys for the McMichaels joined Gough in previous motions for mistrial over the question of Black pastors’ proximity to the trial — civil rights leaders the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson each took turns accompanying Arbery’s parents in the courtroom in recent days — they chose Friday only to acknowledge their concern.
“Right now we don't have any facts upon which to base a motion for mistrial based on jurors being influenced by the public,” Gregory McMichael’s attorney Franklin Hogue said.
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski asked Walmsley to deny the motion for mistrial, saying Gough’s first protest using the "no more Black pastors" and "Colonel Sanders" language was a strategy to incite Black pastors to come to the trial en masse just so he could claim they were sources of influence and intimidation.
“There's absolutely no evidence here that the jurors have been influenced in any way by the first and only larger crowds that came yesterday,” she said. On November 12, he stood up in this courtroom, knowing full well he was on television and made comments about Al Sharpton and then black pastors and Colonel Sanders.
“He got the response he wanted because he has filed a motion a day based on a continued drumbeat of well see people are coming and people are responding. They're responding to what he strategically knowingly intelligently did so that there would be a response so that he could then complain of it.”
Walmsley made a similar suggestion after Gough’s first request for a mistrial and said that the courtroom would remain open to the public.
— The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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