1st day of trial wraps up in Ahmaud Arbery murder case after controversy over jury

Dunikoski methodically went through the events of Feb. 23, 2020, the day Arbery was killed.

She said it started around 1 p.m. when Gregory McMichael saw Arbery run past his home and allegedly assumed Arbery was a burglar seen in security videos a neighbor showed him. Dunikoski said at no time did Gregory McMichael ever see Arbery at the house under construction or had any reason to believe Arbery had committed a felony, grounds for making a citizens' arrest.

Dunikoski said Gregory McMichael ran into his home, armed himself with a handgun and got his son, Travis. She said Travis armed himself with a Remington 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and that he and his father got into his pickup truck and chased after Arbery.

She said that Bryan joined the chase with his pickup truck, not knowing why the McMichaels were chasing Arbery. Dunikoski said that during the five-minute chase of Arbery, Bryan attempted to strike the man with his pickup on four different occasions and admitted to running Arbery off the road and into a ditch.

Dunikoski played a cellphone video of the moment Arbery was cornered between the McMichaels' pickup and Bryan's truck and when Travis McMichael got out of his vehicle and shot Arbery.

As the video was played, Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, who was sitting at the rear of the courtroom, broke down in tears.

Dunikoski also played a 911 call Gregory McMichael made at 1:14 p.m. and described an emergency: "I'm here in Satilla Shores. A Black male is running down the street."

"This was an attack on Mr. Arbery for five minutes and the only thing Mr. Arbery did was try to run away," Dunikoski said.

Dunikoski said the evidence will show that the defendants wrongly assumed Arbery was burglarizing a home under construction in their neighborhood.

The prosecutor played multiple videos of Arbery inside the unfinished home dating back to Oct. 25, 2019, to show that Arbery had a routine of running through the Satilla Shores neighborhood where the defendants lived.

But Dunikoski said none of the videos showed Arbery stealing or damaging anything. She said that after Arbery was captured on surveillance video on Feb. 11, 2020, the owner of the home under construction, Larry English, told the McMichaels through a sheriff's deputy that the unidentified Black man had been seen on security video at the home before and that he never stole anything.

Dunikoski also played a body-camera video of a sheriff's deputy speaking to the McMicheals outside the home under construction.

"At no time on this video do you hear the words burglary or attempted burglary," she said, referring to the reasons the McMichaels claimed they were attempting to make a citizen's arrest of Arbery.

Dunikoski, the lead prosecutor in the case, began her opening statement by telling the jurors why they were there.

"We are here because of assumptions and driveway decisions," Dunikoski said.

"A very wise person once said do not assume the worst of another person's intentions until you actually know what's going on with them."

Dunikoski went on, "And in this case, all three of these defendants did everything that they did based on assumptions. And they made decisions in their driveways based on assumptions that took a young man's life and that's why we are here."

The jury of 11 white people and one Black person was sworn in by Judge Walmsley.

The judge acknowledged that many of the jurors have never served on a jury before. During his instructions, he went over the charges against the three defendants and told jurors the men have all pleaded not guilty to the charges.

"The charges and the plea of not guilty are of evidence of guilt," Walmsley told the panel, which sat socially distant, divided between the jury box and one side of the courtroom gallery.

"The defendants are presumed innocent until each is proven guilty. Each defendant enters upon the trial of the case with a presumption of innocence in his favor," he said.