Jury in Ahmaud Arbery murder case adjourns for night
Jurors in the Ahmaud Arbery slay case started deliberating Tuesday over the fate of the three white men accused of killing the black unarmed jogger in Georgia last year.
Gregory McMichael, 65, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, are charged with murder, assault and other crimes in the shooting death of Arbery, 25, who they suspected was fleeing a burglary as he ran through their neighborhood near Brunswick.
“It is your duty to consider the facts objectively without favor, affection, or sympathy to anyone,” Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley instructed the jurors in the racially charged high-profile case Tuesday.
The primarily white 12-person panel started deliberating the case around noon and continued through lunch before the judge called them back just before 6 p.m. to see if they wanted to call it quits for the day.
The jury foreman said the panel would continue deliberating, then returned about a half-hour later to say the panel was finished for the night.
The defendants face a minimum penalty of life in prison if convicted of the murder charges against them. It would be up to the jury to then decide whether they should be given the possibility of parole.
Even if parole is granted, the person must serve 30 years in prison before he is eligible.
Deliberations began after jurors heard a two-hour prosecution rebuttal of the defense’s closing arguments.
Lead prosecutor Linda Dunikoski accused defense lawyers of trying to blame Arbery for his own death.
“Standard stuff: ‘Malign the victim, it’s the victim’s fault,’ ” Dunikoski told the jury Tuesday morning. “I know you’re not going to buy into that. It’s offensive.”
Among those present for the trial was Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, who at times appeared emotional over evidence of her son’s final moments.
On Tuesday, Cooper-Jones let out a quiet, pained cry of “Oh!” when the prosecution showed a crime-scene photo of her son’s bloodied body in the street.
The gruesome image prompted his father, Marcus Arbery, to leave the courtroom in a hurry.
Later, outside court, Cooper-Jones commended Dunikoski for doing a “fantastic job” in the final rebuttal.
“She presented the evidence again very well. I do think that we will come back with a guilty verdict, and I want to leave with this: God has brought us this far, and he’s not going to fail us now. We will get justice for Ahmaud,” Cooper-Jones told reporters.
Earlier Tuesday, the mom told “CBS Mornings” that she was not prepared for the defense to “go that low” at trial.
She had abruptly left the courtroom at one point Monday over comments from defense lawyer Laura Hogue, who told the jurors during closing arguments that Arbery was running around with “no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails,” referring to a description in the autopsy report.
Cooper-Jones told the TV show, “I’ll just say this: Regardless of how long and how dirty his toenails were, that’s still my son, and he didn’t deserve to die the way that he died.”
The defense has said the suspects believed Arbery was fleeing a burglary after he was spotted at least five previous times looking around a local home under construction.
The McMichaels jumped into a truck to chase Arbery that day, after Gregory spotted him running by. Bryan joined them in his own vehicle and filmed the pursuit and shooting.
The defense has argued that the three men had reason to believe Arbery was behind a recent spate of neighborhood thefts, though no evidence has emerged that he stole anything.
The men said they tried to make a citizen’s arrest, which was allowed under Georgia law at the time of Arbery’s death, and that the jogger was shot when he struggled over the gun.
Prosecutors countered that the men were not authorized to detain Arbery under a citizen’s arrest because they had no “immediate” knowledge that he committed a crime.
Dunikoski said the defendants had “no badge, no uniform, no authority” and blasted them as “just some strange guys in a white pickup truck.
“You can’t make a citizen’s arrest because someone’s running down the street and you have no idea what they did wrong,” Dunikoski said.
She also insisted that the men cannot argue they were acting in self-defense because they initiated the pursuit of Arbery through the neighborhood of Satilla Shores.
“You can’t claim self-defense if you are the unjustified initial aggressor — meaning if you started it. Who started this? Wasn’t Ahmaud Arbery,” she said.
Lawyer Jason Sheffield said his client, Travis McMichael, feared for his life when he opened fire after Arbery charged at him, threw punches and tried to grab the weapon.
“[Travis has] done what he thinks the law allows him to do, which is to try to de-escalate … by showing force necessary to prevent Travis himself or his father from getting beaten and possibly killed,” Sheffield said.
Travis, the only defendant to take the stand, said he was forced to make a “life-or-death” decision.
As jurors deliberated Tuesday, Sheffield said that he was “confident” about the case that they presented over the last two weeks.
“We feel very confident in the evidence of Travis’s innocence,” he told WSB Radio. “Now, we’ll see what the jury feels is justice, and we will accept the verdict — whatever it is.”
The jury — which consists of 11 white people and one black man — will weigh more than a week of testimony, including widely seen cellphone footage taken by Bryan of the shooting.
Each of the three defendants is facing nine criminal counts including malice murder, felony murder and false imprisonment.
Once a verdict is reached, there will be a “fair amount of lead time” for the defendants, counsel and families to assemble in the courtroom, authorities told NBC News.
With Post wires
