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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.
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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Travis McMichael's attorney gives closing argument
Jason Sheffield, an attorney for Travis McMichael, began his closing argument with the statement, "Duty and responsibility and following law will always be intertwined with heartache and tragedy."
He added, "This case is about three things: it's about watching, it's about waiting, it's about believing."
Sheffield added that Travis McMichael spent nearly a decade in the U.S. Coast Guard "learning about duty and responsibility."
"He received extensive training on how to make decisions that would ultimately impact his beliefs as a petty officer in the Coast Guard, as a boarding officer in the Coast Guard," said Sheffield, adding that Travis McMichael trained on probable cause, use of force and using a gun to deter crime to the point it was part of his "muscle memory."
He said around the time Arbery was killed, the neighborhood of Satilla Shores was experiencing an increase in crime and suspicious people lurking in the neighborhood. He cited the testimony of several residents of the community who testified.
"They told you that this was happening in their neighborhood scared them," Sheffield said.
Sheffield directed the jury to an encounter Travis McMichael had with a man who was later identified as Arbery outside a home under construction in the neighborhood that Arbery was seen several times on security video entering.
Sheffield said the offense of burglary does not have to constitute a break-in, or a broken window or busted door.
"That's not what's required for the law. Those questions are meaningless and they are red herrings," Sheffield said. "You just have to break the plane of the structure to constitute a burglary."
State wraps closing arguments, asks jury to use 'common sense'
The prosecutor told the panel that all three defendants are guilty of the crimes they are charged.
She said the evidence shows the McMichaels and Bryan used their pickup trucks to falsely imprison Arbery, that Bryan admitted to police that he tried to block Arbery several times and once ran him into a ditch during the five-minute chase.
She cautioned the jury that the defense attorneys will make it seem logical that it was reasonable for the three men on trial to be scared of Arbery and that he was attacking them, and that Travis McMichael "had to pull a shotgun out on him."
"They're going to make it seem so reasonable," Dunikoski said. "Put on your critical thinking caps. Use your common sense when they're up here giving their closing arguments."
Prosecutor alleges Travis McMichael's testimony was 'completely made up for trial'
Dunikoski methodically went through the evidence piece by piece Monday, telling the jury that at no time did the McMichaels and Bryan ever mentioned to police on the day of the killing that they were attempting to make a citizen's arrest or that any of them saw Arbery leaving a house under construction in their neighborhood. She noted that a requirement for making a citizen's arrest is to witness a felony take place or at least have direct knowledge of one having occurred.
"But for their actions, but for their decisions, but for their assumptions, Ahmaud Arbery would be alive," Dunikoski said.
She asked the jury to reject Travis McMichael's testimony that he, his father and Bryan chased down Arbery and shot him in self-defense, saying
you can't be the initial aggressors and then claim self-defense.
"Here's the problem, this is completely made up for trial," Dunikoski said, pointing out the differences between what Travis McMichael told police on the day of the shooting and what he said during his testimony.
"Simply put ladies and gentlemen, if you determine that this was not a citizen's arrest, this was not legitimate, he had no probable cause, you can't do this based on the law, then guess what? They're not justified in killing him, they're not justified of any of the felonies they committed against him," Dunikoski said.
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."
'Ignorance of the law is no excuse': Prosecutor
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski began her rebuttal argument by telling the jury she wants to make sure "we are on the same page as far as the facts and the law goes."
She said the law requires "a fair-minded and impartial juror to honestly seek the truth."
"In other words, do you think they committed the crimes? That's all you need. Oh, if you go, 'Yeah, I think they committed the crimes, you're good. That's all you need."
Dunikoski's statement prompted objections from the defense attorneys that she was misstating the law. Judge Timothy Walmsley told the jury he will instruct them on the law once Dunikoski is finished.
The prosecutor then told the jury that "ignorance of the law is no excuse."
"If you're going to take the law into your own hands, you better know what the law is," Dunikoski said, referring to the laws of self-defense and citizen's arrests that the defendants are claiming.
"The state is not saying that Greg and Travis McMichael ran out of their house to go murder him," Dunikoski said. "It started out as one thing and it escalated and it escalated until it became murder."