Lawyers for two men charged with the killing of Ahmaud Arbery last year are seeking to restrict ways that he can be described by prosecutors during the upcoming trial, including using words to describe him as the victim of a crime and disallowing photographs of Arbery with family members.
Travis McMichael shot and killed Arbery as the latter was out for a jog near Brunswick, Georgia, in February 2020. His father, Gregory McMichael, who had driven the vehicle with Travis while the two pursued Arbery for several blocks, had initially told law enforcement that Arbery had “violently” attacked his son, resulting in what he had described as a self-defense shooting.
The two said they had pursued Arbery because they believed he matched the description of someone who was entering homes in the area.
But footage from that day’s events, which was released several months after Arbery was killed, shows that both McMichaels, who are white, had taken actions that threatened Arbery, who is Black. The two drove their vehicle for several minutes, guns in hand, pursuing Arbery, the video showed.
When Travis McMichael exited the vehicle and confronted Arbery with a shotgun, Arbery attempted to grab the weapon from McMichael, who then shot Arbery three times.
With the trial for the two McMichaels and their friend William Bryan — who was also involved in the chase that led to the killing of Arbery — set to begin in October, defense lawyers are doing everything they can to downplay the significance of Arbery’s life in the eyes of the jury, reported The Daily Beast’s Kali Holloway.
A motion was filed in late 2020, for example, requesting that the judge only allow one photo of Arbery “when living” to be shown during the trial. The picture cannot show him with family members or other loved ones, per the defense’s request.
That same motion also asked the judge to disallow any family member to be the one to identify Arbery during the trial.
A separate motion from defense lawyers for the McMichaels seeks to bar prosecutors from referring to Arbery as a “victim” in the case, in spite of him being pursued, shot and killed. Doing so would be “loaded” language, the defense team complained, which would wrongly purport guilt on the part of their clients.
Those motions, and several others like them, were filed in order to avoid “the danger of unfair prejudice” among jurors, the defense lawyers said.
The defense team’s motions are an attempt “to prevent a jury from seeing the human life his killers snuffed out that day,” wrote Holloway. Lawyers for the McMichaels are “working to portray a young man who was jogging near his home as a dangerous Black threat whose death was warranted and even necessary.”
Several other examples abound of how the defense lawyers have tried to limit the ways in which their clients can be prosecuted.
Last month, the defense team requested that the judge ask potential jury members to answer a questionnaire before being interviewed individually by lawyers from both sides. That questionnaire would ask jurors about their views on a number of topics, including whether Black Americans and other minorities are treated unfairly in the U.S. criminal justice system, whether “white people who use force against Black people are less likely to be prosecuted than Black people who use force against white people,” and which of three options — “Black Lives Matter,” “Blue Lives Matter,” or “All Lives Matter” — they are most likely to align with (Gregory McMichaels is a retired police officer).
In the same filing last month, defense lawyers requested that the judge bar the press from being in the courtroom during the jury selection process — an ask that contradicts rulings and precedents set by both the Georgia and the United States Supreme Courts.
The trial is set to begin on October 18. The McMichaels and Bryan each face nine charges for their role in Arbery’s killing: four counts of felony murder; two counts of aggravated assault; one count of malice murder; one count of false imprisonment; and one count of criminal intent to commit false imprisonment.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy