All three men charged in the death of Ahmaud Arbery — a 25-year-old Black man who was chased and shot in a Georgia neighbourhood in February 2020 — were convicted of murder Wednesday.
The jury reached its decision after more than 10 hours of deliberations following a trial in which prosecutors argued that the defendants — father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbour William “Roddie” Bryan, who are all white — provoked a confrontation with Arbery. Defence attorneys said their clients were acting in self-defence.
Arbery’s killing became part of a larger national reckoning on racial injustice after a graphic video of his death leaked online two months later.
The case went to the jury Tuesday after a nearly two-week trial.
On Feb. 23, 2020, Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck as he ran in the Satilla Shores subdivision just outside the port city of Brunswick, Ga. Bryan joined the chase in his own truck and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times with a shotgun.
No arrests were made until the graphic video of the shooting leaked online more than two months later.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation subsequently took over the case from local police and the McMichaels and Bryan were soon jailed on charges of murder and other felony counts.
The selection of 11 white jurors and one Black man to decide the fate of the three defendants had drawn complaints from prosecutors and the victim’s family that jury selection process was blatantly unfair.
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