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Ahmaud Arbery death trial live updates: 3 found guilty of murder

Arbery was fatally shot on Feb. 23, 2020, in Satilla Shores, Georgia.

ByBill Hutchinson
Last Updated: November 22, 2021, 10:17 AM EST

A Georgia jury resumed deliberating on Wednesday the fates of three white men charged with trapping Ahmaud Arbery with their pickup trucks and fatally shooting him.

"Your oath requires that you will decide this case based on the evidence," Judge Timothy Walmsley told the jury before sending the panel off to begin their deliberations on Tuesday.

The jury got the case after Linda Dunikoski, the Cobb County, Georgia, assistant district attorney appointed as a special prosecutor in the Glynn County case, took two hours to rebut the closing arguments made on Monday by attorneys for the three defendants.

The jury, comprised of 11 white people and one Black person, heard wildly different summations on Monday of the same evidence in the racially-charged case. Dunikoski alleged the defendants pursued and murdered Arbery because of wrong assumptions they made that the Black man running through their neighborhood had committed a burglary, while defense attorneys countered that Arbery was shot in self-defense when he resisted a citizen's arrest.

Travis McMichael, the 35-year-old U.S. Coast Guard veteran; his father, Gregory McMichael, 65, a retired Glynn County police officer, and their neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, 53, each face maximum sentences of life in prison if convicted on all the charges.

The defendants have pleaded not guilty to a nine-count state indictment that includes malice murder, multiple charges of felony murder, false imprisonment, aggravated assault with a 12-gauge shotgun and aggravated assault with their pickup trucks.

The McMichaels and Bryan were also indicted on federal hate crime charges in April and have all pleaded not guilty.

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Here's how the news developed. All times Eastern.
Nov 22, 2021, 10:17 AM EST

Prosecutor says defendants attacked Arbery because he was Black

Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski began her closing argument by telling the jury that the three defendants chased and killed Arbery based on "assumptions and decisions" made in their driveways based on rumor and neighborhood gossip.

"The state's position is all three of these defendants made assumptions, made assumptions about what was going on that day and they made their decision to attack Ahmaud Arbery in their driveways because he was a Black man running down the street," Dunikoski said.

She stressed that the "bottom line" is that the defendants assumed Arbery had committed a crime "because he was running real fast down the street."

"They did not call 911. They wanted to stop him and 'question' him before they called 911," she said. "How do we know that? Because that is what they told the police that night."

She asked the jury to closely consider the evidence she said shows beyond reasonable doubt that the men committed murder.

"This is your search for the truth," Dunikoski told the jury. "You are Glynn County."

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