An almost white jury tries three men of that race for the murder of a young black man | International

A jury of twelve must decide the fate of three white men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man. Of those twelve members of the jury, only one of them is black. With this latest controversial episode in the jury’s selection, the trial against Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and his neighbor, William Bryan, who are accused of murder, began this morning in Brunswick (Georgia).

Controversy has colored the case from the beginning. Arbery went for a run on February 23, 2020 when he was mugged, shot and killed after being pursued by the defendants. However, the video of what happened did not come to light until more than two months later, which resulted in a wave of indignation that coincided with the demonstrations that then took place after the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd. Floyd’s 9 minutes and 29 seconds of agony recorded on camera sparked a summer of nationwide protests the likes of which had never been experienced since the 1960s and the fight for civil rights.

The selection of the jury has been particularly long: Two and a half weeks. Defense attorneys for the three white men eliminated 11 of the 12 potential black jurors, prompting accusations of racial profiling. For Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer, “after being persecuted, cornered and shot for being a black man in a white neighborhood in Georgia, Ahmaud Arbery is once again denied justice.” “The fate of their murderers will be decided by an almost totally white jury,” recalled Crump, quoted by the agency France Presse, who noted that this composition does not reflect the community, since in Glynn County, where the trial, approximately 25% of the 85,000 residents are black. When Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, learned of the court’s choice, she called it “devastating.” “I’m surprised there is only one black juror.”

The reconstruction of the events reveals a ruthless sequence, with one of the three men, Bryan, 52, who recorded what happened, allegedly running over Arbery with his truck after he joined the persecution that the father and son had started. , 65 and 35 years old. In addition, the murderer would have used a racial slur against the 25-year-old. However, despite the death of one person, the three men were allowed to leave the scene and were not arrested until after video of the shooting became public. In their defense, the McMichaels said they were part of a citizen patrol that guarded the neighborhood and held Arbery responsible for several robberies, which is why Travis, the son, shot him with a shotgun in self-defense. However, a local police spokesman later said that only one robbery had been reported in more than seven weeks prior to the shooting.

The selection of the jury in the Georgia case is the antithesis of what happened in another trial, the one carried out in Wisconsin against Kyle Rittenhouse, an 18-year-old white man who, equipped with a semiautomatic rifle, opened fire in the city of Kenosha. in the summer of 2020 at a rally against racism, following a police shooting that left a black man paralyzed. Rittenhouse killed two men and wounded a third. All the victims are white. The jury selection was carried out in a single day.

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