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Witness testimony concluded Friday in the federal hate crimes trial of the three men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery -- Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William "Roddie" Bryan -- after Travis McMichael's former boss said he fired McMichael for lying to him about his role in Arbery's death.

After four days of testimony from 20 witnesses, the government and defense teams rested their cases. Closing arguments are set to begin on Monday.

Joe Mandala, McMichael's former boss at Metson Marine, testified that he first heard about the shooting when McMichael called him on the day it took place. According to Mandala's testimony, McMichael said he had shot and killed somebody.

McMichael then asked if Mandala remembered him complaining about break-ins around his neighborhood, Mandala testified. Mandala recalled McMichael was calm and repeatedly said he was attacked, and that the shooting was self-defense.


Mandala testified that McMichael stayed home from work the next day but returned on Tuesday, when he still appeared calm and retold the story.

But things changed when video of the shooting was released to the public in May and a co-worker made Mandala aware of the video, according to Mandala.

"I was shocked and upset. What he told me was a lie...that that was not what had happened was upsetting," Mandala told jurors.

Mandala testified that as soon as he saw the video, he called his regional and security managers to report what he saw and let them know he wanted to fire McMichael. He also alerted the Port Operations Officer.

However, Mandala admitted under cross-examination that there were no complaints at work about McMichael's performance or behavior.



The state's 17th witness, Deputy Stephanie Britt of Glynn County Sheriff's Office Internal Affairs, testified about recorded jailhouse phone calls made by Travis and Gregory McMichael.

A message announcing the recording plays each time an inmate makes a call and plays again when the person they are calling picks up the phone, according to Britt.

Jurors heard one call between Gregory McMichael and someone who he "referred to as brother," according to Britt.

During the call, the man tells Gregory McMichael that he can't sleep and thinks about Gregory and Travis McMichael all the time. Greg replies, "No good deed goes unpunished."

Britt added that the two men were "speaking of the situation that Greg was in," referring to Ahmaud Arbery's fatal shooting.

Jurors also heard another call between Travis McMichael and his mother.

During their conversation, Travis McMichael complained that he was tired of being pursued and chased. According to Britt, he was talking about "the situation that landed him in jail," meaning Arbery's killing.

A jury in the federal hate crimes trial of the three men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery is now deliberating whether the men committed the crime because of the color of Arbery's skin.

In closing arguments in the hate crimes trial, a prosecutor said the three pursued Arbery in a fit of vigilantism -- and they did it because they saw "a Black man in their neighborhood and assumed the worst of him," a prosecutor said in closing arguments of their federal hate crimes trial.

"This wasn't about trespassing. This wasn't about neighborhood crimes, either. ... It was about race -- racial assumptions, racial resentment, and racial anger," Justice Department civil rights division counsel Christopher J. Perras told a jury in court Monday morning in Brunswick, Georgia.

Defendants Travis McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor William "Roddie" Bryan knew only this for certain when they saw Arbery running in their neighborhood in February 2020 outside Brunswick -- that Arbery "was a Black man running down a public street," Perras said.

Perras zeroed in on testimony showing all three talked about Black people in derogatory terms and with racial slurs, including in texts and social media, and argued evidence showed the McMichaels associated Black men with criminality.

"(The McMichaels didn't pursue) because they were concerned about trespassing, unless something extra was motivating them. ... (It was) pent-up racial anger," Perras said.


Bryan's attorney, Pete Theodocion, rejected arguments that Bryan acted because of race.

Bryan, who joined the pursuit in his own truck after seeing the McMichaels follow a running Arbery in their pickup, and who recorded video of the shooting, would have done so regardless of skin color, Theodocion said.

"This (Bryant's pursuit) would have happened regardless of (Arbery's) race," Theodocion said.


Prosecutors at both trials conceded Arbery was at the construction site several times including the day of the shooting, but always without breaking in or taking anything, and never doing anything that would allow the men to pursue or stop him. They argued that White people visited the site apparently without being chased, and that the pursuers did not actually see Arbery at the site that day and had no knowledge he'd committed a crime.


Prosecutor raises evidence of racial slurs and animus


Perras said evidence showed Travis McMichael projected hatred of Black people onto Arbery. When Travis McMichael's gun was stolen from the neighborhood well before the fatal February 2020 encounter, evidence showed he blamed that on the Black person who had been reported at the construction site.

There was no evidence any such person had taken McMichael's gun, and he ignored evidence that a White person had allegedly stolen a gun from a vehicle down the street weeks beforehand, Perras said.

Perras also pointed to evidence that Bryan posted racial slurs, and disapproved of his daughter's relationship with a Black man. Perras argued Bryan's pursuit of Arbery -- after seeing Arbery running from the McMichaels' truck -- was based on race, citing testimony that Bryan didn't know precisely what was happening or asked what the pursuit was about.

"He didn't ask Ahmaud, 'Are you OK.' ... (He assumed) the Black man was in the wrong and the White guys were in the right. ... That's how hard-wired his racial assumptions were," Perras said.

Theodocion, Bryan's attorney, countered Monday that Arbery never asked for help. What Bryan saw was two people -- in a truck he recognized from the neighborhood -- asking Arbery to stop, and Arbery wasn't stopping.

"It was entirely reasonable" to assume the person being chased did something wrong, Theodocion said. Bryan "absolutely" had "enough evidence" to follow in his own vehicle at a slow speed and record video, the lawyer said.


"The point in this trial is not whether he has opinions we don't approve of. ... He was not shown through this evidence to have a hatred of African Americans (or) a want of violence," toward them, Theodocion said.


Previous testimony


Perras on Monday argued the defendants, after Arbery's killing, falsely told police Arbery had been caught breaking into houses. That was part of a pattern, Perras said, showing the defendants knew what they had done wrong and were trying to get away with it.

What a former US attorney says the prosecution has to show

It isn't clear whether evidence of the defendants making racist comments prior to Arbery's killing will be sufficient to meet the prosecution's burden in a hate crime case, former US Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia Michael Moore told CNN before the trial began.

Though the men's texts and social media posts contain "very unsavory and just disgusting commentary," he said, that alone will not suffice.

"They've got to go in and say, 'We have this evidence of racial bias and race-related motivation, and that is one of the reasons that (Arbery) was killed,'" the former federal prosecutor said. "The question is: Does the fact that somebody may be a racist -- can you say that is what led to this killing? And I think that's a tougher burden on the government."

At the same time, the evidence of past racial slurs provides context for the alleged crimes, Moore said. That may be ample to secure a conviction, he said, because "race doesn't have to be the sole motivator in a hate crimes case."

3 convicted of hate crimes in Arbery murder to be sentenced in August

The three men convicted of federal hate crimes in the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery are scheduled to be sentenced in August.

Arbery killers' sentencing for hate crimes moved to August
A federal judge has postponed sentencing for the white men convicted of hate crimes in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery until Aug. 8

U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood agreed to push sentencing hearings back one week after prosecutors cited a scheduling conflict. She scheduled the three defendants to be sentenced individually during hearings spaced two hours apart.

Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan each face possible life sentences after being convicted of hate crimes in February by a federal jury that concluded they chased and killed 25-year-old Arbery because he was Black.

All three defendants are already serving life in prison for the February 23, 2020, killing after being found guilty of murder in a Georgia state court last fall.

Judge to arraign ex-DA charged in Arbery killing's aftermath

RUSS BYNUM
Tue, November 29, 2022 at 11:06 PM

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A former Georgia prosecutor charged more than a year ago with hindering the police investigation into the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery has been ordered to appear before a judge next month for her first court appearance.

Superior Court Judge John R. Turner on Tuesday scheduled a Dec. 29 arraignment for former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson, who will have a chance to enter a plea after the charges are formally presented in court.

The judge said he will also take up any pending legal motions, which include a request by Johnson's defense attorneys to have one of the charges dismissed.

Johnson served as the top prosecutor for coastal Glynn County when white men in pickup trucks chased and killed Arbery after they spotted the young Black man running in their neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick on Feb. 23, 2020.

One of Johnson's former employees, Greg McMichael, initiated the fatal pursuit and his adult son, Travis McMichael, fired the shotgun blasts that left 25-year-old Arbery dead in the street. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the chase and recorded cellphone video of the killing.

More than two months passed before the McMichaels and Bryan were arrested on murder charges in Arbery's death, which happened after Bryan's graphic video was leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-arraig ... 03691.html

Attorneys are asking a U.S. appeals court to throw out the hate crime convictions of three White men who used pickup trucks to chase Ahmaud Arbery through the streets of a Georgia subdivision before one of them killed the running Black man with a shotgun.

A panel of judges from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that followed a national outcry over Arbery's death. The men's lawyers argue that evidence of past racist comments they made didn't prove a racist intent to harm.

On Feb. 23, 2020, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves with guns and drove in pursuit of Arbery after spotting the 25-year-old man running in their neighborhood outside the port city of Brunswick. A neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, joined the chase in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery in the street.

More than two months passed without arrests, until Bryan's graphic video of the killing leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. Charges soon followed.

All three men were convicted of murder in a Georgia state court in late 2021. After a second trial in early 2022 in federal court, a jury found the trio guilty of hate crimes and attempted kidnapping, concluding the men targeted Arbery because he was Black.