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The trial against three white men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, the African American man from 25 years he was hunted through a suburban Georgia neighborhood before being shot and killed by one of his pursuers in February 2020 began on Friday, after an exhausting process that lasted two and a half weeks to select the jury, which was composed of 11 white and an African American.
Arbery was killed because he was seen running in the Satilla Shores neighborhood, in what his family calls a modern lynching .
The case sparked intense protests over racism and the hate crimes in the United States and key details of it emerged in the weeks prior to George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis .
The controversial jury selection in the case against three white men accused of persecuting and killing in February last year the African-American Ahmaud Arbery in the small town of Brunswick, Georgia, marked the beginning of oral arguments in this trial on Friday.
The jury selection process, which lasted two weeks and average, determined that eleven whites and one African American will be in charge of deciding the conviction of Greg and Travis McMichael, who They are father and son, and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan , all of them white and charged with the murder of Arbery.
In the opening of oral arguments this Friday, the Georgia State Attorney’s Office criticized that the defense of the McMichael and Bryan discriminated against candidates African Americans during jury selection. In Glynn County, where the trial is taking place, more than 26 % of the 80, 04 residents are African American and around the 69% are white, according to data from 1920 from the U.S. Census Bureau
This jury will assess the guilt of the McMichael, who pursued the 23 February 2020, armed with firearms and aboard a van, to Arbery, from 25 years, while running to exercise through a neighborhood on the outskirts of Brunswick. The other defendant, Bryan, joined the pursuit and recorded with a mobile how Travis McMichael shot Arbery up close, killing him.
The three face this state court in Georgia charges of premeditated murder and manslaughter, as well as aggravated assault and unlawful deprivation of liberty.
Part of this event was recorded in a video of 36 seconds, and its publication months after the incident generated a wave of protests in the US
Precisely, the main state prosecutor, Linda Dunikoski, played this video at the beginning of the oral arguments in this case.
Defense attorneys maintain that none of the three men committed any crime , al arg Increase that father and son suspected that the African American could be a thief, and that Travis McMichael fired in self-defense.
The defense also asked this Friday Judge Timothy Walmsley to declare the trial null because he considered that the Prosecutor’s Office raised questions “inappropriately” about the arrests of the defendants, which occurred more than two months after the incident.
Judge Walmsley dismissed that petition and decided to go ahead with the trial.
The trial is scheduled to end next 19 November, according to the Office Glynn County District Attorney, although it could be extended beyond that date.
Suspects are incarcerated during the trial, after they were denied bail.