Atlanta, GA - On Thursday, October 24, in Brunswick, Georgia, dozens of family, friends and community members gathered at Glynn County Courthouse as the defense counsel for the three men who have been imprisoned for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery pled their case for a retrial.

Background to a Georgia lynching

Ahmaud Arbery was a 25-year-old Black man who was jogging in his Georgia neighborhood of Satilla Shores on February 23, 2020, when three white me – Travis McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan – killed him. The McMichaels were in one vehicle, armed, while Bryan was in another vehicle. The men used the two vehicles to block Arbery in. Bryan stayed in his vehicle while recording on his cell phone. Travis McMichael exited his vehicle and stood on the driver’s side holding a shotgun while Gregory McMichael stood in the bed of their truck holding a handgun.

As Arbery approached their truck from the back, he attempted to run past their vehicle while avoiding Travis by running on the passenger side. Travis advanced around the front of the vehicle toward Arbery. Ahmaud Arbery attempted to defend himself before being fatally shot three times by Travis McMichael as they struggled over the shotgun.

This murder case brought national headlines for two main reasons: the public release of the video that Bryan took on his cell phone and the racial motivation of the crime that came out clearly during investigation. 911 dispatch recordings show that two 911 calls were made on Arbery that day. The first was a neighbor complaining that he had stopped jogging to examine a construction site. The second was Gregory McMichael who said, ”I'm out here at Satilla Shores...There's a black male running down the street.“ In statements to the police, Gregory McMichael explained that he and his son were attempting to perform a citizen’s arrest on Arbery for thefts in the neighborhood.

Initially, the Waycross Judicial Circuit district attorney did not intend to arrest or charge any of the three men involved in Arbery’s murder, saying that his death was a “justifiable homicide” based on Gregory and Travis McMichael’s claims that Arbery initiated the physical altercation.

It wasn’t until the release of the video on May 5 to a local news station and the subsequent uploading of video clips online that public outcry forced the state to press charges on the McMichaels, and both father and son were arrested on May 7. On May 8, Roddie Bryan sought legal counsel and was interviewed by the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) on May 11 and 13. Two weeks later, Bryan was also charged and arrested.

Bryan’s statements to police included the fact that Travis McMichael had called Arbery a “fucking n***er” while standing over his dying body.

18 months later, each of the three men was found guilty of multiple counts of murder, aggravated assault, and false imprisonment. The McMichaels were sentenced to life without parole and Bryan was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

In addition to these state-level convictions, the three men were also convicted of a federal hate crimes charge in 2022. This past March, the 11th Circuit heard their appeal of that hate crime conviction, but it has yet to issue a decision.

Throughout 2020 during the George Floyd Rebellion, Ahmaud Arbery’s name was chanted alongside George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and countless other names by millions of people in the streets demanding an end to racist violence. In Georgia, Arbery’s death led to the creation of a state Hate Crimes law which remains on the books today.

Killers pushing for retrial

This week, Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan appeared in court while their attorneys used increasingly outlandish tactics to get a retrial. The younger McMichael’s attorney, Pete Donaldson, headed up most of the day’s proceedings for the defense.

As he repeated himself at length, Donaldson’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-worthy performance drew laughs of disbelief from the gallery and led a nearby reporter to write “filibuster??” on his notepad.

In the case of all three men, their argument hinges on the assertion that members of the jury received “extraneous information” about the case that clouded their ability to carry out their duties without prejudice against the McMichaels and Bryan. To prove this, Donaldson called Juror 380 (jurors were only referred to by number to protect their anonymity) to the stand.

This was a controversial move among the gathered crowd as Juror 380 was the only Black person on the jury.

Donaldson’s questioning of Juror 380 went from strange and confusing to bizarre and groan-inducing over the course of the 45-minute exchange. Highlights included more than 50 individual uses of the phrase “hot dog” and asking Juror 380 to recount conversations in prayer with “the Lord.”

Juror 380 lives just a few short blocks from the courthouse where rallies took place in support of the Arbery family before and during the trial. Donaldson’s questions were intended to accuse Juror 380 of an inability to be impartial because, first, Juror 380 walked past a rally to order a hot dog at a local stand, and second, Juror 380 is a deeply religious person who prayed to “the Lord” about their role as a juror and admitted to feeling sorry for the Arbery family, imagining what could happen to their own children.

Bizarre arguments to get racist murderers off the hook

William Bryan’s attorney, Rodney Zell, took it a step farther and attempted to make a few additional arguments. Zell called Bryan’s original trial attorney, Kevin Gough, to the stand. During this exchange, the arguments by Bryan’s attorney centered on three major themes.

First, Zell attempted to paint a picture of improper communication between attorney Gough and law enforcement and/or prosecution by rehashing a timeline of events leading up to Bryan's eventual arrest.

Second, he attempted to establish the lack of mental fortitude of his client. During this section of examination, Gough used “stupid” and “lil dummy” in reference to Bryan, claiming that if Bryan had better verbal skills, he would not have made such incriminating statements to the police that led to his conviction. Incredibly, Gough said, “it’s not like he’s retarded,” but still had “very little” comprehension and was a shy man who was more likely to have just been going along with the stronger personality of Gregory McMichaels.

Finally, appealing attorney Zell revealed, through his examination of attorney Gough, that the latter had intended to make a ‘mistake of fact’ defense in the original trial and simply forgot to do so in his closing arguments. Under oath, Gough claimed that he “bungled it” and that clearly the new attorney intended to try to make a similar argument for retrial.

“Mistake of fact” is a legal defense when a defendant's mistaken belief negates the mental state required to commit a crime. The example Senior Assistant District Attorney Linda Dunikoski used to illustrate this defense was if Person A gave Person B’s credit card to her, and told her that Person B said it was okay for her to put a charge on the card, that she could then use a mistake of fact defense if she was later charged with theft.

Throughout the questioning and the rest of the court appearance, however, it was never made clear what “mistake of fact” Bryan might have been operating under during the murder that would then negate his guilt. The judge clarified for the court that assumptions cannot be used as basis for mistake of fact. Thus, Bryan’s assumption that Arbery was guilty of robbery or Bryan’s assumption that the McMichaels were not armed would not negate his guilt.

The day ended when the defense attorneys agreed to submit written briefs for the rest of their arguments. No date for continuing the hearing was scheduled.

Family and community react

Ahmaud Arbery’s father and aunt - Marcus Arbery and Diane Jackson - were among the gathered friends, family and community in attendance at the hearing on Thursday. The general attitude was that this hearing was cruel to the family and a waste of everyone’s time.

“They can tell they ain’t got nothing to stand on,” said Diane Jackson, referring to the defense attorneys, “but all they doing is opening wounds for the family. We tired of this...leave us alone, that’s all we ask.”

Many in the crowd shook their heads with disgusted dismay, lamenting that Juror 380 was singled out because of their status as the only Black juror. “If that don’t show you that racism is still strong!” Jackson declared, “It’s wrong.”

Laith Abdel Hader, an organizer with the Atlanta Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, left Atlanta at 4 a.m. to make the five-hour journey to Brunswick. They were joined by a dozen other concerned community members from the Atlanta Alliance and Black Lives Matter Grassroots Atlanta. Abdel Hader shared that their attendance at the rally was to support the Arbery family and ensure that the “white supremacist killers stay in prison where they should be.”

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