A defense attorney for one of the three men accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery in a racially-charged incident in Glynn County, Georgia blamed the death on the victim, saying Arbery was “running away instead of facing the consequences” and “making terrible, unexpected, illogical choices.”
Lawyer Laura Hogue made the remarks during her closing argument on Monday. She represents Gregory McMichael, who’s on trial alongside his son Travis and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan. The defendants are all white. Arbery, 25-years-old when he was shot to death, was black.
“Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails,” Hogue said.
Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, exited the courtroom during Hogue’s closing argument.
“I thought it was very, very rude to talk about his long, dirty toenails and to totally neglect that my son had a huge hole in his chest when he was shot with that shotgun,” she told CNN.
CNN adds:
Legal experts took exception to Hogues’ comment.
In that moment, Hogue took the opportunity to portray Arbery as a “runaway slave,” said Charles Coleman Jr., a civil rights attorney and former prosecutor.”
Her word choice was intentional, her descriptions were unnecessary. And the description ultimately is inflammatory,” Coleman told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”
It was an “attempt to sort of really trigger some of the racial tropes and stereotypes that may be deeply embedded in the psyche of some of the jurors,” Coleman told Brown.
The three defendants claim they were attempting a citizen’s arrest because they suspected Arbery was stealing from a construction site in their community. In their telling, Arbery resisted their overtures and they had to shoot him in self-defense.
But video evidence shows that Arbery was out for a jog when the three armed men chased him in an automobile. He had stopped at the construction site, but only briefly. Prosecutors described him as a “looky-loo.”
“You can’t start something and claim self-defense,” Linda Dunikoski, the lead prosecutor, said to the jury on Tuesday morning.
Dunikoski dismissed the notion that the defendants had a legal basis to detain Arbery. The New York Times reports:
Instead, she said, they were basing their impression of Mr. Arbery on gossip and chatter on a community Facebook page, and the situation escalated because of their own sense of entitlement in believing that Mr. Arbery had to stop for them.
“There’s no fear, only anger,” Ms. Dunikoski said, referring to the fatal confrontation between Travis McMichael, who was armed with a shotgun, and Mr. Arbery, who was not armed. Referring to Mr. McMichael, she said, “Do you really believe he had no other choice than to use his shotgun?”
