The judge sent the jury home after the first day of deliberations. The jury will resume discussing on Wednesday the fate of the three men accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery.
After prosecutors and defense attorneys delivered their closing remarks on Monday (November 22), the jury was instructed to begin deliberations in the trial of three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020.
According to CBS News, the court heard final rebuttal arguments from the prosecution Tuesday morning. Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan have all been charged with murder and other counts in the death of the 25-year-old Black man who was jogging through a neighborhood in Brunswick, Ga..
The trio’s defense argued that the men acted lawfully under the state’s now-repealed citizen’s arrest law because of suspicions they had of Arbery possibly being involved in neighborhood burglaries. The prosecution disputed all of it.
“All three of these defendants made assumptions — made assumptions about what was going on that day, and they made their decision to attack Ahmaud Arbery in their driveways because he was a Black man running down the street,” lead prosecutor Linda Dunikoski told the jury, according to CBS News.
Each of the three defendants is facing nine criminal counts including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment.
