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.

Judge Timothy Walmsley, who is presiding over the murder trial, made his final rulings on motions before the jury was expected to be sworn in to hear opening statements.

Walmsley denied a defense motion to blur out a Confederate flag vanity plate that was on the front of Travis McMichael's pickup truck that was used to chase down Arbery on the day he was killed. Walmsley declared the vanity plate was relevant to the case after prosecutor Linda Dunikoski argued at a recent hearing that there was circumstantial evidence that Arbery saw the license plate as the truck came toward him and prompted him to reverse course.

"He put this on his truck. He wanted the world to see it," Dunikoski alleged of Travis McMichael, accusing the defense of being "disingenuous" for asking that the plate be blurred out.

The judge also denied a request from the defense to allow the jury to hear that Arbery was on probation at the time of his death.