With the selection of the jury, the murder trial of the death of the black jogger Ahmaud Arbery began on Monday in the USA. In a court in Brunswick, Georgia, three white men are on trial who followed Arbery in a car in a suburb of Brunswick on February 23, 2020 and shot him after a scuffle.
The 65-year-old Gregory McMichael, his 35-year-old son Travis and their 52-year-old neighbor William Bryan claimed to have mistaken Arbery for a burglar. You are referring to a law in force in the southern state at the time that allows citizens to arrest suspects.
Arbery’s death caused outrage across the country. It became – along with the death of the African American George Floyd in May 2020 – a trigger for the Black Lives Matter protests against racism and violence against blacks that kept the United States in suspense amid the presidential election campaign.
The local prosecutor did not take action against the three whites after Arbery’s death and did not arrest them for weeks. That only changed when a video of Arbery’s death became public two and a half months after the fatal shooting.
The recordings made by the defendant Bryan show how the McMichaels, armed with a rifle and a revolver, block the path of the running Arbery with their pickup truck. There is a scuffle between Travis McMichael and Arbery, then several shots can be heard and the black man collapses.
The selection of the twelve jurors and the four substitute jurors should take several days. Then the prosecution and defense and the hearings of witnesses and experts begin. The defendants have pleaded not guilty.