A Georgian court jury found guilty three men who stalked and killed last year Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man who left home one Sunday afternoon for a run in a mostly white suburban suburb of Brunswick.
The case took place in February 2020. Arbery was unarmed and was killed by a shotgun blast fired by a resident, who was chasing him along with his father and a neighbor.
The case intensified national protests against racism and police violence last year after a video of the shooting, recorded with a cell phone, was broadcast.
Gregory McMichael, 65, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, have pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include murder, aggravated assault and imprisonment. They claim self-defense.
“They made the decision to attack Ahmaud Arbery in his sidewalks because he was a black man running down the street,” prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said in previous arguments. They killed him “not because he was a threat, but because he wouldn’t stop talking to them,” he said.
The defendants said they thought Arbery might be behind recent robberies that happened in the neighborhood, but no evidence emerged of crimes committed by the victim during his frequent runs around the neighborhood.
The jury in the case is composed of 11 white people and 1 black person, which was also a reason for protests. In another case that sparked protests against police violence and racism, the death of George Floyd asphyxiated by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, the composition of the jury was different: there were four black, six white and two multiracial jurors.
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