Federal prosecutors have reached a plea deal with the McMichaels — against the Arbery family’s wishes
Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was fatally shot while jogging through Brunswick, Georgia, after three white men — Gregory McMichael, 65; his son, Travis McMichael, 35; and William “Roddie” Bryan, 52 — pursued him down a suburban street in pickup trucks. According to police reports, both McMichaels confronted Arbery with firearms before Travis McMichael fired the fatal shots.
In her opening statement, prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said Arbery was “under attack” by the three defendants, the New York Times reports. The defendants claimed they suspected Arbery of stealing from an under-construction house that he stopped at during his run, but video surveillance showed Arbery didn’t take anything from the construction site.
What was the defense’s strategy? The defense relied upon Georgia’s old citizen’s-arrest and self-defense laws. Georgia’s since-repealed Civil War–era citizen’s-arrest law gave private citizens the ability to arrest someone if they had reasonable knowledge or suspicion the person committed a crime. The portion of that law that gave private citizens the ability to make arrests was repealed following the national outrage surrounding Arbery’s murder.
Travis told the court that he did not intend to kill Arbery and that he was shocked and traumatized by the incident. He claimed he pointed his gun at Arbery in order to “de-escalate” the situation, a tactic he said he had learned while serving in the Coast Guard. He said the decision to shoot Arbery was a “life-or-death decision” because he feared Arbery would shoot him or his father despite the fact that Arbery was unarmed. “He was all over me,” Travis McMichael said.
The outcome of the trial felt particularly weighted after the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse ended in not-guilty verdicts. Rittenhouse, a white man, shot and killed two men and injured a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, at a Black Lives Matter protest, and his acquittal set an uncomfortable precedent for violent far-right vigilantism.
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