BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Three white men are serving life sentences for murder after being chased and killed. Ahmaud Arbery In 2020, he appeared in court on Thursday and asked the judge for a new trial.
Lawyers for Greg McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and former neighbor William “Roddy” Bryan are facing a number of challenges in the new trial, ranging from jury taint to incompetent lawyers for one of the men. I started making a point. Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley presided over their trial. 2021 Murder Trial and was taken over their writingsplease allow up to two days to hear their legal claims.
Armed with guns, the McMichaels jumped into their pickup truck and chased Arbery. 25 year old black male on February 23, 2020, after he was seen running in front of a house in a subdivision on the outskirts of the port city of Brunswick. Bryan joined the pursuit in his truck and recorded on his cell phone the footage of Travis McMichael firing a shotgun at close range as Arbery lay fatally wounded in the road.
Travis McMichael’s attorney, Pete Donaldson, will present testimony Thursday showing one juror “hidden bias in favor of the Arbery family” when questioned during jury selection. He told the judge that he planned to do so.
Donaldson said the man, identified in court only as Juror No. 380, was interviewed in 2022 by a private investigator working for the defense team. The juror said he prayed after the final juror was selected and said he was the only black person on the jury. panel.
“I felt like the weight of the entire black race was on my shoulders,” Donaldson quoted jurors as saying.
Walmsley said he would allow the jury to testify, with limitations. The judge said the man would be prohibited from discussing jury deliberations, which are protected by law as private.
No arrests were made in Arbery’s murder for more than two months, until Bryan’s cellphone video was leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from police. Arbery’s death, along with the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, became part of a broader reckoning on racial injustice in the criminal legal system.
At the Georgia trial, defense attorneys argued that the armed pursuit was justified because the McMichaels and Bryans suspected Arbery of being a thief and tried to detain him from police. Travis McMichael testified that he fired in self-defense when Arbery attacked him with his fist. Police found no evidence that Arbery had stolen anything or committed any other crimes in the neighborhood.
Greg McMichael’s attorney, Jerry Chappell, said he supports Donaldson’s efforts to question the fairness of the verdict.
Brian’s attorney, Rodney Zell, argued that his client’s trial attorneys were incompetent, particularly in allowing Brian to be interviewed twice by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation before his arrest. Brian’s voluntary statements about how he and the McMichaels took control of the pickup truck to stop Arbery from fleeing were used against all three defendants during the trial.
Bryan’s trial attorney, Kevin Goff, said on the stand Thursday that he made a “gambit to cooperate with the GBI” in hopes that authorities would declare Bryan a witness rather than a suspect. He said some of Brian’s statements to investigators “may not have been very good in retrospect.”
“There was never a legally binding agreement regarding Mr. Brian’s cooperation,” Goff said. “And Mr. Brian was very aware of that.”
Seeking a new trial is the first step for the three defendants to challenge their murder convictions. Walmsley sentenced the McMichaels to life in prison without parole and gave Brian a chance at parole.
The men were also found guilty. federal hate crime The jury concluded that the three targeted Arbery because he was black. Prosecutors offered two dozen Social media posts and text messagesas well as eyewitness testimony, indicated that all three men used racial slurs and belittled black people.
In March, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments from attorneys asking the court to: overturn a hate crime conviction. Judgment on the federal appeal is still pending.
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This article has been corrected to show that juror was identified in court as number 380, not number 30.