Trio charged with murder of Ahmaud Arbery plead not guilty
The three white suspects accused of murdering the unarmed Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia have pleaded not guilty to nine counts that include malice murder and felony murder.
Gregory McMichael, 64, his son, Travis McMichael, 34, and their neighbor William Bryan, 50, were formally charged in Chatham county superior court on Friday morning after a grand jury indicted them at the end of June.
The McMichaels were charged with murder and aggravated assault. Bryan was charged with murder and attempt to illegally detain and confine.
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Arbery, 25, was killed by Travis McMichael on 23 February after he and his father, Gregory McMichael, chased Arbery in their truck and shot him while he was jogging in his neighborhood in the town of Brunswick. They said they believed Arbery was a robbery suspect.
Bryan joined the McMichaels as they pursued Arbery, and took the video footage of the killing that was eventually leaked.
The men were arrested in May, months after the killing, after the footage went viral. The delay in bringing charges sparked national outrage.
Arbery’s killing has been a key part of the recent scrutiny of racism in the US, as well as the handling by police and justice departments of violence against Black Americans.
The McMichaels say they were acting in self-defense, but at a preliminary court hearing in early June, Richard Dial, a special agent with the state’s investigation bureau, said that Bryan overheard Travis McMichael making a racial slur after he shot Arbery. Dial also said there had been other instances when the younger McMichael used anti-Black racial slurs, including on Instagram, and a comment made when he was in the coast guard.
During that hearing, Dial pushed back against Jason Sheffield, an attorney for Travis McMichael, who said that McMichael was using self-defense against Arbery.
“I don’t think it was self-defense by Mr McMichael,” Dial said. “I believe it was self-defense by Mr Arbery.”
Two local district attorney’s offices initially declined to pursue charges against the men before the video was leaked by a local criminal defense attorney. Gregory McMichael was a former police officer who had previously worked as an investigator for the office of the district attorney, Jackie Johnson, who passed the case to another DA.
In April, a second district attorney, George Barnhill, also recused himself from the case, and wrote in a letter that the pursuit of Arbery was “perfectly legal” because Georgia law allows for some forms of citizen’s arrests.
Once the video was leaked, the state’s investigation bureau stepped in and arrested the McMichaels in early May. Bryan was arrested 21 May. The bureau appointed a special prosecutor, Joyette Holmes, a district attorney for a suburb of Atlanta, to oversee the charges.
In a press conference, Holmes said she was aware people want the case to move quickly, but asked for patience as the prosecutors get the case through court.
She said: “We are going to make sure that we find justice in this case. We know that we have a broken family and a broken community down in Brunswick.”
