The Ahmaud Arbery jury has begun deliberations. Yesterday the defense gave closing arguments for the Jim Crow ages. I half expected the ghost of Lester Maddox to show up and hand out ax handles. Newsweek:
In the closing arguments of the trial of the three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, Greg McMichael’s defense attorney suggested that the 25-year-old Black jogger’s actions were also to blame for his death.
On Monday, Laura Hogue took direct aim at Arbery, saying that he wasn’t “an innocent victim,” but rather a “recurring nighttime intruder.”
“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.
At this point, Arbery’s distraught mother got up and left the room.
Seriously, you have to listen to the attorney’s tone of voice to get the full picture.
“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.”- Laura Hogue, attorney for Gregory McMichael #AhmaudArbery https://t.co/x9B2uY47b4 pic.twitter.com/IdeDdPWd6n
— Kailey Tracy (@KaileyTracy) November 22, 2021
Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim — he was murdered. That kind of makes him a victim.
The defense attorneys also had wanted black pastors banned from the courthouse.
But Mr. Gough — who earlier this week said, “We don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here” — took his provocative language to new heights on Friday.
Mr. Gough noted the large crowd of Black pastors and other civil rights demonstrators who gathered on Thursday outside the county courthouse in Brunswick, Ga. “This is what a public lynching looks like in the 21st century, with all due respect,” he said.
… Mr. Gough appeared to be speaking figuratively, since there have been no reports of violence or threats from the people who have gathered outside the courthouse.
The defense had a difficult role to play. They had to downplay the idea that racism had anything to do with the defendants’ stopping a black man jogging in their neighborhood and threatening him with firearms, while at the same time they’ve been dog-whistling up a storm to the mostly white jury. I’m wondering if they haven’t overplayed the dog whistles, even for Georgia.
In other news — true to form, righties wasted no time claiming that Darrell Brooks, the guy who drove through a holiday parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, was a leftie with ties to Black Lives Matter. The lefties killed those people! BLM! Antifa! This seems to always happen after some random act of violence. See, for example, Insanity Nation (2011, Gabby Giffords shooter) and Labeling Stephen Paddock (2017, the Las Vegas shooter) from the Mahablog archives. See also Steve M, who documents that some people are fibbing.
The Arbery jury is 100% from the county where the murder took place. The county is 26% black or African american. The Arbery jury is 11 whites and 1 black. It only takes 1 white juror to deadlock the jury. This has to have been the defense strategy from the start.
If there is a retrial, it will still be held in the same rural Georgia county that sits on the east coast between South Carolina and Florida.
On top of their very racist air-raid siren statements, and un-Christian (but very much on-brand for our un-American Evilgenital (sic) "Christians") attitudes towards the victim's family, the biggest mistake the defense made, was putting KKKlem KKKadiddlehoppe… No, Klem Kadiddlehopper was funny and kind… Travis McMichael, that lying POS, on the stand.
I watched him step on his dick every time he opened his mouth!
That dumbass cracker practically gift-wrapped and put a big-ass bow on the case for the prosecution.
These three inbred goobers are all as guilty a sin!
But will the nearly all-White jury agree?
I no longer have much faith in any of our systems.
And I certainly have absolutely no faith in our judicial system being race-neutral.
Unless you count as "faith" my 'belief' that the trial is rigged, and 'believe' that these three murderers will walk out as free men.
maha,
Missouri finally released Kevin Strickland after 43 years in prison for a crime he never committed.
The DA's office, which admitted its error after those four plus decades, figured out a way to bypass the psychopathic moron who's governor and refused to release this man earlier, and finally got him released.
I was 20 when Strickland went to jail.
He was a year younger.
I'm trying to put myself in his shoes.
I'm trying to imagine the shock I'd feel of walking out into this world, into this country, after 43 years in a cell.
I think the changes from 1978 to now have broken me. Mentally.
The worst thing is, his mother just died in August. And sure enough, MO's racist dick of a governor refused to let him attend. Not even shackled.
Sometimes, I really wish there was a real Hell.
But then I realize that if there is a Hell, then we're in it.
IDK what the jury will do. The movie To Kill A Mockingbird is stuck in my mind, especially the scene where the judge recruits Atticus because he's the only lawyer who will put on a real defense. This is reversed – instead of a black man on trial, it's three white men who killed an unarmed black man. But the dynamics are the same. Can an almost all-white jury see the facts through anything except a racist prism?
I thought the country was mostly past racism. I wanted to believe it but I got run over by the truth. At least, I knew it when I saw it. We've developed three distinct classes on racism. I'm in the group (now) who sees we're NOT past institutional racism – not in housing, jobs, school opportunities, voting, law enforcement (cops), justice system… Crap! So that's one category – call me "woke."
The second class is fairly small – overt white supremacists. They're determined to restore a racial class system that's been under fierce attack by BLM. They SAY that they are being victimized and white people aren't getting fair treatment. BS.
The third group is the swing group, politically. These people are where I WAS – believing that the country has moved past racism. Obama proves there is no racism. They don't want to see racism, so they refuse to look at facts.
Charlottesville is good news today – the jury laid damages of 60 million on the organizers of the Charlottesville protests. Nobody will see the money, but every time any of the guys who put the racists together for violence in Charlottesville moves, attorneys should be able to lock up any money they are associated with.
For a lot of people on the sidelines, the results of these trials will change perceptions. Let me finish on the note I opened with – IDK
The least we learned from Jan 6 is that a large group of people can do criminal actions to revenge an imaginary crime without supporting evidence. Gone are the days when we expect any group to have a member whose job it is to stop a really dumb idea. My guess is these three of the accused in the Arbery trial would all identify as being conservative. I would hardly think a real conservative acts rashly.
Personality assessment is quite an ability, and is based on a considerable amount of solid research. I recall an established pro doing a blind analysis of a personality profile and saying that this person would probably be the type that would end up in a big jam and not know how he got there. At the time I remember thinking those personality types are rare. Now they seem to be ubiquitous.