Another Case Where Everything You've Read Is Wrong: Ahmaud Arbery

Like many people, I followed the Kyle Rittenhouse trial out of Kenosha, Wisconsin fairly closely over the past several weeks. As discussed in Jane’s post on Sunday, that trial proved to be a riveting instance of a totally false and racialized progressive narrative (“white supremacist vigilante crossed state lines with illegal firearm to go on shooting spree against innocent mostly peaceful BLM protesters”) getting completely contradicted by incontestable facts (mostly videos) introduced in evidence at the trial.

But following the Rittenhouse trial has inherently meant little time left to follow another high-profile trial unfolding simultaneously in Brunswick, Georgia — the trial of Gregory and Travis McMichael and Roddy Bryan for the alleged murder of Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020.

Having not devoted much attention to the Arbery matter before now, my brain was of course, as is inevitable, heavily infected with the official progressive narrative of the situation. Here that narrative goes something like this: “innocent unarmed black recreational jogger in white neighborhood hunted down and murdered by white supremacist vigilantes for doing nothing more than ‘jogging while black.’”

With the verdict in the Rittenhouse case in, I’ve now had time to catch up on the Arbery matter. There is an extensive trial record, as well as closing arguments, all of which can be watched on video. And of course, learning the facts has proved yet again that essentially everything, or at least everything important, about the official progressive narrative is false.

That does not necessarily mean that Arbery’s accused murderers will be acquitted. Their claim of self-defense is, for reasons discussed below, somewhat weaker than that of Rittenhouse. As of this writing, the jury has just begun its deliberations. However, before reading up on the facts my sense had been that this was an open-and-shut case against the defendants. Now I would say that they have at least a 50/50 chance of acquittal.

Where might I have ingested the official progressive narrative in the Arbery matter? Well, here is the New York Times article from November 9, shortly after the November 5 start of the trial, headlined “What We Know About the Shooting Death of Ahmaud Arbery.” Excerpt:

Mr. Arbery, 25, was a former high school football standout who was living with his mother outside the small city of Brunswick. He had spent a little time in college but seemed to be in a period of drift in his 20s, testing out various careers, working on his rapping skills and living with his mother. . . . He was shot dead in a suburban neighborhood called Satilla Shores. Friends and family said he liked to stay in good shape, and he was an avid jogger who was often seen running in and around his neighborhood. On Sunday, Feb. 23, 2020, shortly after 1 p.m., he was killed in that neighborhood after being confronted by a white man and his son. . . . Mr. Arbery was running in Satilla Shores when a man standing in his front yard saw him go by, according to a police report. The man, Gregory McMichael, said he thought Mr. Arbery looked like a man suspected in several break-ins in the area. . . .

The Times itself doesn’t use the phrase “jogging while black” in that particular piece, substituting instead the patronizing “friends and family said he liked to stay in good shape and . . . was an avid jogger.” However, you can’t look very far for articles about this case in the media without finding that phrase everywhere. Examples: The Conversation, May 7, 2020, “The killing of Ahmaud Arbery highlights the danger of jogging while black.”; The Undefeated, May 8, 2020, “Running while black: Ahmaud Arbery’s killing reveals runners’ shared fears of profiling.” Or there was the Times’s own collection on May 18, 2020 of responses to its “request to readers” to “share their experiences of ‘running while black.’” One could accurately look at this last one as a very intentional effort to divert readers’ attention away from the actual facts of the Arbery case.

To understand the Times’s key deception, the important background to know is that prior to the incident the neighborhood in question, known as Satilla Shores (just outside Brunswick, Georgia) had been plagued by a string of burglaries. The repeated burglaries had particularly affected a certain property that was a home belonging to a guy named English, that was under construction, and therefore not attended in the evening and not completely secured from intruders. To deal with the burglaries, including at this particular property, the neighborhood had started a “neighborhood watch” program. Separately, English had installed several security cameras at his property.

The key deception in the Times’s November 9 piece is the line that defendant Greg McMichael “said he thought that Mr. Arbery looked like a man suspected in several break-ins in the area.” That line is very carefully calculated to give the impression that Greg McMichael was wrongfully racially profiling Mr. Arbery, based only on Mr. Arbery’s race, and without reasonable grounds for suspicion that Mr. Arbery had committed a crime. Mr. McMichael may well have uttered the quoted statement at some point. But the truth is that by November 9 it was absolutely clear that Mr. Arbery not only “looked like” a suspect, but was absolutely known to have been the very person who was wrongfully in the English house on multiple occasions. The security cameras at the English house had captured Arbery illegally entering this property at least five times, between October 25, 2019 and February 23, 2020. Greg McMichael’s son Travis — another defendant in the case and the one who actually pulled the trigger on the shot that killed Arbery — had observed Arbery with his own eyes entering the under-construction house. The video footage from the English house security cameras was shown to the jury, and also compiled as a collection of stills into a trial exhibit, that can be found in the Daily Mail coverage of the trial here on November 11.

The quality of the pictures is not great, but there is no question that it is Arbery. From a summary at Legal Insurrection of the closing argument on behalf of Greg McMichael, given by lawyer Laura Hogue:

She noted that it was incontestable that it was Ahmaud Arbery returning night after night, repeatedly caught on camera, at the same time thousands of dollars worth of property was disappearing. Did we have a picture of Arbery walking off with the property? No. But the only reasonable inference of someone skulking around another person’s home at night, with valuable property found missing the next day, is that the person skulking was plundering that property, and engaged in felony burglary under Georgia law.

The reason that the defendants in this case have a less-clear self-defense case than did Rittenhouse is that Rittenhouse had been pursued and attacked by the people he killed in self-defense. By contrast, the two McMichaels and Bryan pursued Arbery, after Greg McMichaels had observed Arbery running from the English house. Thus this case involves not just a pure claim of self-defense, but also requires that the defendants have been justified in pursuing and attempting to detain Mr. Arbery. That justification is good, but not completely open-and-shut. The defendants assert that they were entitled to pursue and detain Arbery under a Georgia “citizen’s arrest” statute. Here is the full text of that statute (via Law of Self Defense):

“A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.”

So the issues for the jury are whether Arbery was “escaping or attempting to escape,” and whether the defendants had “reasonable and probable grounds for suspicion” that a felony had been committed. In considering how the facts bear on these issues, keep in mind that the crime of felony burglary in Georgia does not require that you actually took anything on this particular occasion of unlawful entry.

I’ll leave it to the jury to make the decision on whether the McMichaels and Bryan were justified in their conduct. But however the result comes out, the narrative of “innocent recreational jogger murdered for ‘jogging while black’” is and always was completely false. Arbery absolutely did enter the English house illegally on multiple occasions, and Ms. Hogue is completely right that the only reasonable inference is that he was the one stealing the property that repeatedly went missing. Shame on me for reading the New York Times and uncritically thinking there might be some truth to what they were reporting.

“Nothing about the fact that they are lawyers and knowledgeable gave you the impression that you might be going the wrong direction?”

You can find 100 lawyers who DISAGREE with them for everyone who agrees. And no, I do not blindly believe ANY lawyer!

Their rationale was bad. I read a decision a few years ago that went at length about what was meant by immediate knowledge. The dudes didn’t have it. And they view the second sentence in the old Georgia law separately from the first while I think it FLOWS from the first. They didn’t have probably cause.

And the jury obviously agreed with my take.

I also object to taking a law from before the Civil War and trying to shoehorn it into giving people the right to grab guns, chase someone they merely SUSPECT and then threaten to kill him! DAMN STUPID, and they will have a lifetime in prison to regret their honest but STUPID, ILLEGAL action.

>> ...chase someone they merely SUSPECT and then threaten to kill him! <<

Look at the video -- VIEWER WARNING: Uncut video of confrontation, shooting of Ahmaud Arbery (News4JAX). If they'd wanted to kill him merely because of their knowledge of his trespass -- at night more than once captured on infra-red video -- and mere suspicion of theft, they could have done so well before the moment when the actual shooting took place. No firearm was even shown to Arbery until he was bearing down on Travis, running directly toward him when there was plenty of room on the other side.

Even if these guys had been evil (as evil as those who are now condemning them), they wouldn't have been stupid enough to shoot Arbery when he posed no threat to them. Where they went wrong, though, is in underestimating the stupidity, cowardice, and corruption of the people who would condemn them. They've been condemned as murderers, even though as Arbery ran by the right side of the truck, there was nobody blocking his way and the path to escape was open (DOESN'T THAT MATTER?) -- Travis had remained on the left side of the truck and had not fired, and neither had his father Greg (everything was fine so far) -- then Arbery irrationally and aggressively chose to turn sharply to the left, charge across in front of the truck, and attack Travis.

It's right there on the video, and yet a jury, backed by most of the country on both sides of the political spectrum, have concluded that these guys are guilty of murder. I can't come close to expressing the disgust I feel at that.

And the jury obviously agreed with my take.

The Jury obviously noticed the horde of militants outside threatening to burn down the city if the "wrong" verdict happened. They then convinced themselves that doing what the mob wanted was the "right" decision.

I've seen this phenomena many times before. There is even a famous psychological experiment that demonstrates it.

I’ve been reading your comments on this post. We agree. I made the point earlier that what I’m seeing from Freepers is the equivalent of people who still think Kyle shot black people. It appears Freepers who complain about the lying press are believing everything the lying press is saying about this case.

Blocking is not murder, and if he’d been blocked five times, it didn’t seem to have worked very well because in the final video there’s Arbery again, running down the road. That time too there was room to get by. Arbery ran to the right side of the parked truck without being shot at by either Greg or Travis, but then — with nobody blocking him and an open path ahead of him — he chose to turn sharply to the left, and cross over and attack Travis. That irrationally aggressive act cost him his life.

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