Ahmaud Arbery Case: Jury Deliberations On Murder Charges To Resume Wednesday Morning

BRUNSWICK, GA — Jurors continued deliberating early Tuesday evening on the murder charges against the three white men accused of fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery before Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley sent them home for the night.

Walmsley called the jury foreperson into the courtroom shortly before 6 p.m. to ask if it would help deliberations to break for the evening. At first the answer was yes, but within a minute or so the word from the jury was that they wanted to keep at their work Tuesday night.

But in less than 30 minutes, the decision was made to halt deliberations for the day. The judge reminded jurors not to discuss the case with anyone, or look at social media, and they will resume their work at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Prosecutors rebutted defense claims of self-defense Tuesday morning, the judge gave the jury instructions on the charges they're considering, and deliberations began before noon.

"When you come back with your guilty verdict, what you're telling the defendants is 'you know what you did and now we know what you did," prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said.

Dunikoski took two hours to present her final rebuttal to the jury in an effort to convince them they should convict Travis McMichael, his father, Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., for malice murder, two counts each of aggravated assault, and false imprisonment charges. The charges are all felonies that prosecutors say contributed to Arbery’s death on Feb. 23, 2020.

Dunikoski has to prove the four party-to-a-crime felony murder charges, which hold defendants accountable for any death that results from felonies they are accused of committing, also levied against all three men.

(Watch the livestream of the trial at the bottom of this story. Patch will update with the verdict as soon as it's announced.)

The prosecution’s case hinges on the story that has circulated across the country for one year and nine months: That the 25-year-old unarmed Black man fled on foot from three white men chasing him in a pair of pickup trucks until they cornered him and shot and killed him.

Walmsley explained the charges against Bryan and the McMichaels to the jury, then dismissed them to deliberate.

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Tuesday morning, the prosecutor moved to eliminate the arguments that defense attorneys spelled out for their respective clients.

Dunikoski said Travis McMichael initiated the encounter, so he had no right to say he was defending himself.

"You can’t claim self-defense if you are the unjustified initial aggressor, meaning if you started it," she said.

Addressing the claim that the defendants wanted to exact a citizen's arrest, she said, "Greg McMichael assumed the worst."

When the elder McMichael saw Arbery running past their home, he told police later he thought Arbery had done something.

"That is not sufficient for a citizen's arrest," she said. "This is not probable cause. This is, 'I don't know what in the world this guy was doing, but he's running down the street real fast.' That's what that is."

Dunikoski then turned her attention to Bryan's assertion that he was only following in his Chevy Silverado to make a record of what was happening.

She said Arbery's decisions reflected someone trying to escape both trucks.

"Mr. Bryan played a substantial and necessary part in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Is he responsible? Yes," Dunikoski said.

She then spoke to the party-to-a-crime charges Bryan and the McMichaels face.

"Now, felony murder. If you're committing a felony, there's no intent to go ahead and kill the person," Dunikoski said. "But because you're committing a felony, someone dies.

"OK, let's not be fooled. But for the felony. But for the false imprisonment. But for the assault with the motor vehicles. But for the aggravated assault with the shutdown, Ahmaud Arbery wouldn't be dead," she said.

The Cobb County assistant district attorney, assigned to the case by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr after the district attorneys in the Brunswick and Waycross judicial districts recused themselves, took over as lead prosecutor in May when her co-counsel, Jesse Evans resigned from the Cobb District Attorney’s office.

See Also: Abery Defendants Demand Mistrial Over Black Panther Presence

Defense attorney Jason Sheffield argued Monday that Travis McMichael, who fatally pulled the trigger of the pump-action shotgun, did so in self-defense out of fear for his life of an Arbery who was attacking the armed man.

“They have a duty under the law to prove that Travis at the time he raised that gun was not in fear,” Sheffield told the jury during his closing arguments.

The defense team asserted that although Gregory McMichael was armed when he and his son set out after Arbery, the elder McMichael only intended to exact a citizen’s arrest hoping to detain a suspicious person the ex-cop believed had been breaking into homes recently in the Satilla Shores neighborhood.

“How else does one hold an individual who does not want to be arrested for the police to come?” Gregory McMichael’s attorney, Laura Hogue, asked on Monday. “You have to possibly hold him at gunpoint without firing a shot. Not an aggravated assault. But the use of a reasonable and measured amount of force to make him stay where he did not want to.”

Bryan’s attorney pointed out his client was unarmed and did not communicate with the McMichaels when he followed them and recorded video of the encounter on his phone.

“He did not know and could not know that Arbery would be shot,” defense attorney Kevin Gough said of Bryan. “And by that time, sadly, there was nothing Roddie Bryan could do to prevent this tragedy. Roddie Bryan didn't shoot anyone.”