Government evidence is expected to include inflammatory text messages and social media posts by the defendants, as federal prosecutors argue the trio stalked Arbery and killed him because he was black.
Legal experts say proving such a motive could be difficult. It’s not enough to show evidence they’ve said racist things in the past, said attorney Page Pate, who has a law office in downtown Braunschweig and has been following the case closely. “They must prove that their racism led them to kill Ahmaud Arbery.”
There was a palpable sense of relief in this community on the Georgia coast last year when a jury of 11 whites and one black found guilty the day before Thanksgiving. Arbery’s February 23, 2020, shoot brought Glynn County into the national spotlight after Bryan’s cellphone video of the 25-year-old falling face down in the street was released and featured repeatedly on the nightly news.
County police officers saw the video at the scene and interviewed the McMichaels and Bryan that afternoon, investigators testified at the state trial. But Glynn County police never made an arrest in the killing. The men were not charged until 74 days later, when the GBI took over the investigation.
“It was shocking,” Glynn County Commissioner Cap Fendig said of the shooting. “I was appalled by what happened and I was appalled that it appeared to have been kept secret.”
Fendig, whose family has lived at St Simons for generations, served two terms as commissioner in the early 2000s before being re-elected last year. He praised the way residents held peaceful demonstrations and demanded accountability.
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FILE – Protesters hold signs as they demonstrate for Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick on June 4, 2020. (ALYSSA POINTER / ALYSSA.POINTER@AJC.COM)
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
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FILE – Protesters hold signs as they demonstrate for Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick on June 4, 2020. (ALYSSA POINTER / ALYSSA.POINTER@AJC.COM)
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
“For our community, it has brought us closer together,” he said. “This is a small town and sometimes a crisis brings a community together rather than tearing it apart.”
Tension reigned across the county as residents eagerly awaited the verdicts in last year’s state trial. When the men were convicted, many here felt that justice had finally been served.
“For some people, that was a sense of completion,” said Rabbi Rachael Bregman, who helped organize interfaith prayer groups outside the Glynn County Courthouse during last fall’s trial. The group, Glynn Clergy for Equity, is planning additional meetings during the federal proceedings to support anyone who may need it, she said.
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Brunswick, Georgia, Rabbi Rachael M. Bregman/Photo by Bobby Haven.
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Brunswick, Georgia, Rabbi Rachael M. Bregman/Photo by Bobby Haven.
“I expect the content of this process to be much more difficult at the community level,” said Bregman, who directs Temple Beth Tefilloh in Brunswick. “Some of the stuff that comes out of this could be ugly.”
Arbery’s murder and widespread criticism of local law enforcement’s handling of the case have wrought some changes in Glynn County. In December, Jacques Battiste was sworn in as the borough’s first black police chief in the department’s 102-year history.
Battiste, a 57-year-old South Carolina native, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he hopes to enact meaningful reforms to ensure something like this never happens again.
“It was an epiphany not just for Glynn County, but for the rest of the country,” said Battiste, whose law enforcement history spans more than two decades with the FBI. “A systemic level of racism is still very much present in today’s society.”
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Glynn County Police Commissioner Jacques Battiste
Credit: contributed
Credit: contributed
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Glynn County Police Commissioner Jacques Battiste
Credit: contributed
Credit: contributed
Glynn police officers are now required to undergo implicit bias training, the chief said. Battiste also plans to bring in an outside group to review what went wrong with the department’s handling of the Arbery case.
“We’re retooling this department,” he said. “We dropped the ball critically… We should have trained better and been better prepared to deal with that situation and we missed it.”
Most of the people summoned to jury selection last week had seen the video and knew of Arbery’s death by shooting. In light of the publicity surrounding the case, US District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood issued subpoenas to about 1,000 people in all 43 counties of the Southern District of Georgia.
Still, the majority of potential jurors interviewed early in the trial were familiar with at least some details of the case — and many of them had negative views of the defendants after repeatedly seeing Bryan’s cellphone video.
“The most vivid evidence in this case is the video, and almost every juror saw it,” Greg McMichael’s attorney, AJ Balbo, said in court Tuesday.
One judge wrote in her questionnaire that Arbery was being hunted down by so-called “redneck vigilantes.” The white woman, who has a mixed-race son, also called Bryan “stupid” for filming the young man’s death instead of helping.
The McMichaels alleged that they were attempting to make a citizen’s arrest on suspicion that Arbery was responsible for a series of burglaries in their Satilla Shores neighborhood. But many would-be jurors said they couldn’t understand why the defendants didn’t just call the police and let them deal with it.
“The men seemed to have taken the law into their own hands,” said juror prospective No. 325. She was deemed fair enough to advance to the next round of jury selection on Thursday.
The atmosphere surrounding the first week of jury selection felt more subdued than when the process began last year. There were no protesters outside chanting or carrying banners that read “I’m running with Maud”.
Nevertheless, concrete barricades have been erected around the Federal Supreme Court and several parking spaces remain closed along Braunschweiger Hauptstrasse.
Barbara Arnwine, President and founder of the Washington DC-based Transformative Justice Coalition, is expecting crowds of protesters next week. “We’re just waiting for the process to begin,” she said. “We’ll be out there in full force.”
As with last year’s trial, the attorney sits next to Arbery’s father in court every day.
“My family is still struggling because you cannot replace Ahmaud,” Marcus Arbery said Thursday. “He was one of a kind and we will miss him for the rest of our lives.”
Arnwine said this trial is historic, although all three men have already been convicted and sentenced. Prosecutors in the state case deliberately avoided focusing on racism before alluding to it during closing arguments, she noted. Here such evidence will be in the foreground.
“99 percent of the time, there is no racist evidence in the courtroom,” prosecutor Christopher Perras said during jury selection. “In that case there will be.”
Perry, the pastor, expects some of the statements made at the trial will evoke an element of “shock and disgust.”
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Rev John Perry II
Credit: contributed
Credit: Contributed
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Rev John Perry II
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
“I believe all the evidence is there that there was some level of racial hatred,” he said. “But one of the things we’re hoping for from this case is that we’ll have a greater level of sensitivity to one another.”
