Posted on 11/24/2021 3:55:57 AM PST by MtnClimber
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.
A video of the full closing argument is available at the link.
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.
I read your description, and I watched the video. They don’t match.
>> ...but also requires that the defendants have been justified in pursuing and attempting to detain Mr. Arbery. <<
That’s not my interpretation of self defense, and they never actually made an arrest. Earlier they’d tried to get him to stop, so as to delay him until the police could arrive — because they correctly identified him as the man wanted by the police for questioning for entering the house at night more than once (almost anyone might stop and look at a house under construction during the day, but being caught on infra-red video in the dark is something else).
The question is not whether he ever stole anything, though. He may very well have not. And it’s not whether he deserved to be killed simply because of a legitimate suspicion of, at least, trespassing and possibly theft. Of course a killing would be justified for that, and that’s not why he was killed. If so, he’d have been killed earlier. He was killed because he chose to attack McMichael.
This is a man who was on probation. If I were on probation, I wouldn’t have entered the house even during the day. He’d been given 5 years for showing up at a basketball game with a pistol in his waistband. It’s not known whether he had hopes of stealing something from the site, but he’d never been seen by anyone jogging in the neighborhood, and video shows him walking, not jogging, up to the house the day of the shooting. Then he sprints out, not jogs, when he sees someone across the street with a phone observing him. The only time he jogs is toward the end when he tires from running.
What really matters, though, occurs at the end, and that too is on video. The video shows that when Arbery goes around the right side of the truck, he has an open path of escape ahead of him. Instead of taking it, though, he makes a sharp left turn and charges in front of the truck and attacks Travis McMichael, who — this is important — hasn’t blocked his way and has remained on the left side of the truck.
McMichael’s life was clearly at risk then, and despite the distortions in the media — and from politicians on both sides of the political spectrum — he should have been able to defend himself. However annoyed this on-probation criminal may have been about being pursued earlier when the neighborhood residents rightly identified him as the suspect the police wanted to interrogate, he didn’t have the right to make that sharp left turn and start a life-or-death struggle with McMichael. It’s his own fault he’s dead. It’s outrageous that these men who were rightly concerned about what was happened their neighborhood have been charged with murder.
>> Of course a killing would be justified for that, and that’s not why he was killed. <<
I meant — Of course a killing would NOT be justified for that, and that’s not why he was killed.
>> It’s outrageous that these men who were rightly concerned about what was happened their neighborhood have been charged with murder. <<
I meant: It’s outrageous that these men who were rightly concerned about what was happening in their neighborhood have been charged with murder.
I suspect that because the defendants chased him down and shot him that self defense will be ruled out.
Didn’t happen. Arbery charged the man who shot him.
Based on the written test ii y available to read and also video, I would vote to convict.
That’s the lesson for the “define the police” types: fewer police does not mean healthier perps, it means more dead perps. Citizens aren’t trained, equipped, and backed for “minimal force” use.
I do remember that St. Trayvon Martin got so mad about being profiled that he was pounding the head of the 'white Hispanic' into the sidewalk when he got shot.
So maybe the fear of being 'profiled' is stronger than the fear of being shot. Just one of those things yinz white guys wouldn't understand.
I didn’t follow the Arbery case until I saw parts of the trial on Court TV as it alternated between that trial and the Kyle Rittenhouse one. I soon learned, though, that it was not as it had been portrayed. I’ve written a good bit about it recently, based on the videos and what I recall of the testimony from Court TV. I’ll go ahead and post what I’ve written in case anyone is interested in more details from a non-anti-McMichael perspective. I wasn’t predisposed in their favor at the beginning but do support them now. (I’m open to correction on anything I claim that’s not true, of course.)
The cases are incomparable. Aubrey was no innocent, and the others insisted on escalation, as they expected compliance, until he saw no other way out.
The media coverage in this case is far worse than what I saw for Kyle. From the testimony I’ve seen and the video evidence, though, the Arbery case appears to be another clear case of self defense. You have to have seen the defense’s questioning of Travis McMichael (the shooter) to understand what led him to be standing by his truck with a shotgun. Earlier no weapon had been shown to Arbery. It wasn’t on display when he was asked to stop, or when he was told that the police had been called, which caused Arbery to run off in another direction. Hmm...is that suspicious or not?
According to Travis’s testimony he’d also seen Arbery trying to force his way into the other truck that had followed him (and if I recall correctly, fingerprints were found on it). This increased Travis’s belief that Arbery was potentially dangerous. After seeing that, Travis sees Arbery come down the road toward him and his father (not the final time but shortly before the final time). Travis and his father had given up following Arbery and had taken a position where they could guide any arriving police in the direction in which they’d last seen him. This next-to-last approach takes place toward the end of the incidents, and Arbery is no longer sprinting but “jogging”.
Travis is standing by the door to his truck but doesn’t have his weapon out yet (not only was there a reasonable expectation of danger when Arbery was shot, but there was one each time Travis took out his weapon). Arbery, rather than running on the other side of the road, runs directly toward him, just as he did the final time. Don’t you think that’s significant?
Travis fears he’s about to be attacked, he yells at Arbery to stop, and when Arbery gets about 20 feet away, he pulls out the shotgun — that’s the first time Arbery has seen a weapon — and points it directly at him. Arbery sees it and immediately reverses course, and heads back in the opposite direction, disappearing around the bend. Travis and his father don’t pursue him.
This was almost a rehearsal for the shooting itself, but this first time Arbery turns away and doesn’t attack.
So Arbery disappears around the bend, but not for long. Soon he comes back around and heads toward them again. This final part you can see on the video taken from the second truck except when the camera moves to the side momentarily or they move slightly beyond where it’s pointing. Again Arbery is running straight toward Travis. Note that. You can see it clearly on the video.
This is a regular two-lane road. There are many places in the road to run. How can anyone doubt that’s he’s running straight toward him on purpose. As he gets about 20 feet away, Travis points the shotgun right at him, and Arbery veers to the right side of the road, where there’s space to run by (and even more space to run by in the adjacent yard — he’s not blocked, and that’s a significant fact). You see the moment he veers to the right, but then the camera becomes unstable, and you don’t see him again until a couple of seconds later when he has reached the right side and is running by the truck on that side. (So far, so good.)
Fortunately the video shows exactly what happens in the final moments (and if it weren't for that, the defendants wouldn't have a prayer). Arbery is running by the right side of the truck. Note that Greg, who's in the back of the truck, hasn't shot him as he runs by, and neither did Travis as he approached and turned to the right.
As Arbery runs by the right side of the truck, unobstructed, he suddenly turns to the left, runs across the front of the truck, and attacks Travis. How can anyone see that, and not think of self defense? That's the key moment in the entire incident. Arbery clearly could have kept running, but instead he turned and charged Travis.
I don't put the blame for that on the shooter. Arbery made the decision to turn and attack him. He could have kept going.
Here's the plain video, without any lies accompanying it to tell you that you're seeing something that's not there -- VIEWER WARNING: Uncut video of confrontation, shooting of Ahmaud Arbery (News4JAX).
I know a fair bit about the case. Not an expert. There ARE some legal questions the jury will need to resolve. But the men who pursued and killed him are scum who give those of us who CCW bad names. And give us whites a bad reputation MOST of us do not deserve.
Hope they get long prison terms.
A major point not discussed.
It is not smart to play cop.
The fact that citizen’s arrest is legal under certain circumstances does not make it the smartest alternative.
This case is an outstanding example of how things can go wrong.
Even plainclothes cops will call for uniformed patrol cops when making an arrest. As a cop explained to me one very dark night, the uniform has an effect on people.
I basically went psycho on them screaming POLICE! and commands laced with obscenities while pointing my 92f in their face.
They instantly complied and I cuffed the larger of the 2 and kept my weapon trained on the others head til a squad arrived and confirmed the warrant.
My point is this: I was able to convince the bad guys that I was clearly in charge and if they twitched I would follow through. Communication and demeanor command respect. Thankfully they believed I was sincere and able.
Amateurs with no training or experience get people killed. I believe a pro may have been able to pull it off. Perhaps not. /armchairquarterback.
Scum? Even if they were, they have the right to self defense. You don’t understand the situation. Read the posts I wrote above and tell me anything I said that’s wrong.
You won’t find anything that will essentially affect McMichael’s right to defend himself in the life-or-death struggle that Arbery chose to initiate with him (when the path of escape lay open to him). Arbery acted erratically and in an aggressively irrational way, and that caused his death.
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