A Georgia jury on Wednesday found three men guilty as charged for the 2020 murder of unarmed Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery.

“A jury with only one Black juror, even with racial dog whistles from defense counsel, recognized and honored Ahmaud Arbery’s humanity.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the nearly all-white jury convicted Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan Jr.—who recorded video of the fatal encounter—of 23 charges.

Cheers erupted in the Brunswick courthouse amid tears and hugs as the three men were found guilty. Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, silently prayed just before Judge Timothy Walmsley read the verdicts.

“I never thought this day would come,” Cooper-Jones said outside the courthouse following the convictions, “but God is good.”

“With their verdict, the jury rejected the vestige of Jim Crow and the assertion of white supremacy that was at the center of this case,” Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, said in a statement. “This is a vitally important step, brought about because of the determination of Ahmaud Arbery’s family and his community and the public protests.”

“Importantly, this movement led to the repeal of the citizen’s arrest law, and we must continue to work for racial equality in the state of Georgia,” she added.

Jesselyn McCurdy, executive vice president for government affairs at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement that “today’s conviction is a bittersweet salve to the loved ones of Mr. Arbery and those of us who were horrified by his tragic murder.”

“Too often the bigoted assumptions of white supremacists are prioritized over the actual lives of Black people and other people of color across this country,” she continued. “Although nothing can bring Mr. Arbery back, we must dedicate ourselves to confronting the white supremacy that claimed Mr. Arbery’s life and defend communities targeted for hate to ensure no more lives are tragically lost to such senseless, racist violence.”

Travis McMichael was found guilty of all nine charges against him—which included malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault—while his father was convicted on eight of the nine charges. Bryan was found guilty of six of the nine charges he faced.

“A jury with only one Black juror, even with racial dog whistles from defense counsel, recognized and honored Ahmaud Arbery’s humanity as much as it punished his murderers for their depravity,” Damon Hewett, president and executive director with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement. “The jurors sent a signal about accountability for the racist violence and harassment that inherently ignores the humanity of Black people.”

The three men convicted were immediately taken into custody of the Glynn County Sheriff’s Office.

Arbery was running in the Satilla Shores neighborhood of Brunswick, Georgia on February 23, 2020 when he was confronted by the McMichaels—who claimed they thought the unarmed man may have committed a burglary—and shot by the son as Bryan recorded the attack. There is no evidence that Arbery committed any crime.

According to Bryan, Travis McMichael called Arbery a “fucking nigger” as he lay dying.

After being briefly questioned by police, the three killers were allowed to go free for 74 days. Meanwhile, Waycross District Attorney George E. Barnhill defended the murder as an act of “justifiable homicide” under Georgia’s “stand your ground” law. Outraged critics called Arbery’s slaying a “modern-day lynching.”

In April, the McMichaels and Bryan were charged with federal hate crimes in connection with Arbery’s killing.

Cooper-Jones said that her son “will now rest in peace.”

“It’s been a long fight. It’s been a hard fight,” she said outside the courthouse. “To tell you the truth, I never saw this day back in 2020.”

 

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13 COMMENTS

      • Criminals are not overly intelligent so I would not count on them not recording their crimes for posterity. Criminals that are also racist, bigoted, etc. are even stupider so I’d say we’re in for more of their shitty videos-thankfully yes, but they’re still hideous things just like the people making them.

    • Not sure how. It’s tough to claim you killed someone in “self defense” when you have to chase them to kill them. Running them down with your truck is not a good look for such a defense either. I don’t know how exactly Georgia’s “citizen arrest” law is written but if for some reason it is worded in such a way that what these three murderers did falls in that statute, I cannot see even the most reactionary court letting it influence this case. An unconstitutional law is still that-unconstitutional. And murder is still that-murder.

      And I fully admit I sure as shit could be wrong on this, after all, it’s still the south.

  3. Fed trial in February. These guys reminded me of my grandfather (KKK.) He got his karma late in his life. Alcoholic, blind diabetic. These guys got theirs now. They will have to be in prison segregation to protect them. Hmmmmmm – segregation – like I said – karma.

  4. The fictional Eric Endicott is real tonight in countless racist assholes tonight starting with the new CONVICTS and their defense lawyers. That scene from (the movie version) of In the Heat Of the Night became known as the slap heard round the world. It would take a while to explain my personal connections to that movie (most was filmed in towns near where I grew up – and we went to Sparta one day to watch) but what really got me was the Endicott character turning away and starting to cry – because as his last line (There was a time when I could have had you shot) indicates he was being confronted with a new reality. And the dude looked a LOT like my racist, P.O.S. KKK grandfather. It was all too easy to imagine him saying the same thing in a situation where a black man would slap him right back in the face and, the cop(s) not shooting him dead on the spot because things were changing ever so slightly crying.

    Georgia isn’t suddenly populated by white folks with unicorn DNA that love rainbows, but at least it’s changing enough that sometimes they recognize blatant racism and reject what was really a variation of an old-fashioned lynching. Everybody in that courtroom including the three now CONVICTS knew the truth of what happened and why. And while they initially got the protection of LE and other authorities they expected they’d get they never dreamed they’d wind up on trial. And seeing some of the end and the look on the actual shooter’s face as the prosecutor so effectively did her job he was for the first time scared that he might actually be in real trouble. I can only imagine his sleepless nights praying to his Jeebus for a hung jury. That at least ONE of those white folks his team had gotten away with packing the jury with would respond to all the racist dog whistles.

    He’s still fairly young. I hope he rots away in prison, and never breathes a breath of free air for the rest of his life. Same for his fellow CONVICTS who no doubt assumed they too would get a pass. Hell, I’d imagine their hopes actually went up after the Rittenhouse verdict. I’m mean spirited enough to wish that’s exactly what happened – that they grabbed on to hope that no jury made up of almost all white people in THEIR state would ever convict them, only to have that hope smashed and ground into fine dust today!

    • My wife and I drive through Philadelphia, MS on our way to our doctors. I always think of those murdering KKK scum and the jury of twelve that let them go free. I am talking about the three civil rights workers killed and buried in a levee in the early 60’s.

      Until these racists have no power I will think of this country as a shit hole. I am sorry. I gave almost ten years of my life to this country and only got out of the service after the fools elected Republicans for President three times. I wasn’t going to die for a bunch of fascist scum. And believe me, I hurt myself financially by getting out of the Navy. The officers are nothing but an artifact of King George and should not even exist, but we are a country of stupid fools for the most part. These officers almost got me and the crew dead many times. Why I am still alive I don’t really know.

      Until we all shake off these notions of superiority and develop systems and mores that reflect our declaration of independence and our constitution, we are going to be weak.

      • I met my ex-wife while stationed in the DC area during my active duty days in the Corps. Since we wound up divorced I periodically looked back with regret over having gotten out. Then came election night in 2016. It was bad enough to see Trump get the nomination and that things would even be close. But the wound to my heart and spirit when he officially was declared President Elect has never healed. I don’t believe it ever will. If this country I too served had enough people in one of our major political Parties willing to even nominate who was so unfit for the Office in every way, then it wasn’t worthy of your service or mine. Or worse, of my dad’s – he was badly wounded in WWII. Or so many countless individuals (both in the armed forces and in other ways) who sacrificed so much including in so many cases their very lives to move us along, ever so slowly and sometimes even grudgingly to our founding ideals. I’m in my mid-sixties now so I remember all too well many of the struggles of the 1960s and while I knew my country was capable of greatness and had indeed done great things I also could see with my own eyes that it was also flawed. In some ways deeply so. Still, in fits and starts I believed we were making progress on the upward path. That belief is shattered. I doubt that in what’s likely left of my life we will have turned things around. Stopped the bleeding and sewn up the wounds. Even if that day eventually comes the scars will be deep and ugly and forever visible.

        Worse, even as so many are trying to heal this country most of one of our political Parties (and even some Democrats and Independents) are not just willing but even eager to not only rip out the stitches but inflict gaping NEW wounds! Trump is worse than the asshole who commits murder/suicide, killing his wife/girlfriend and then himself due to the “if I can’t have her no one can” sick & twisted mentality. He is that of course, but he’s the writ large via our political system of Jim Jones.

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