Jury selection begins Monday in trial of 3 accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery
Jury selection was set to start Monday in the trial of three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery — a process that could take weeks in a case that’s become synonymous with the nation’s racial reckoning.
About 1,000 potential jurors were summoned for a panel that will weigh charges that the men chased and killing Arbery, 25, as the Black man jogged through their suburban Georgia neighborhood in February 2020.
The case, which was not even considered for investigation until video was posted online two months afterward, has become a rallying point for other slayings of innocent Black people by both civilians and police.
Accused in Arbery’s case are Gregory McMichael, 65, and his son Travis McMichael, 35, both charged with killing Arbery. William “Roddy” Bryan, 52, who caught up with the pair at the end of the confrontation and filmed the shooting, also is charged with murder . The three were arrested in May 2020, with Bryan also hit with a criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment charge.
Lawyers are aiming to try the case in Glynn County, where Arbery and the three defendants lived within 2 miles of each other. Potential jurors will be grilled about whether they’ll be able to decide the widely publicized case fairly, based on evidence presented in court.
“It’s about whether they’ve already prejudged the case, have they already made up their minds even a little bit,” Page Pate, an Atlanta trial attorney who’s not involved in the case, told The Associated Press. “It’s not just the saturation of news coverage. When something like this happens in a smaller town, it’s what are people saying at work? What are they saying when you go to church?”
Finding someone who hasn’t heard of the case would be the least desirable option.
“Anybody that suggests that they don’t know anything about this case is most likely trying to get on this jury,” lawyer Gene Nichols, who is not involved in the case, told WJXT-TV. “Both the state and the defense need to be very wary of jurors who want to be on this jury, because that means that they have a plan or an agenda or some thought that they want to impart on this case.”
A total of 600 people were told to report Monday morning to a courthouse annex building. Glynn County Superior Court Clerk Ronald Adams said an additional 400 will be on standby to show up Oct. 25 if there aren’t enough qualified jurors in the first batch. That’s compared with the 100 to 150 jury duty notices normally issued.
“So many people either know the defendants or the victim or know something about it,” Adams told the AP. “You really don’t want to come up short on the number of qualified jurors that you have.”
Arbery’s death on Feb. 23, 2020, later became part of the broader reckoning on racial injustice in the criminal legal system after a string of fatal encounters between Black people and police — George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks, among others. Akeem Baker, a close friend of Arbery’s, still takes runs on the 23rd day of each month for a distance of exactly 2.23 miles to keep his memory alive.
The McMichaels are arguing they acted in self-defense after trying to make a citizens’ arrest, suspecting Arbery was responsible for a series of neighborhood break-ins. They also saw him going into a home construction site. When the father and son called 911, the dispatcher asked them what they thought Arbery was doing wrong, aside from “running down the street,” as they described it.
The three will also be tried on federal hate crime charges in February 2022..
Former Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson, who was the first prosecutor assigned to the case, was charged with violating her oath as a public officer by allegedly “showing favor” to Gregory McMichael. She also faced a misdemeanor count of obstructing a police officer for her delay in calling for an arrest and investigation.
It was revealed she once had a working relationship with Gregory McMichael. Johnson, who lost a reelection bid in November 2020, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
With News Wire Services
