Why Did Ahmaud Arbery’s Murder Trial Bring Down?

Linda Dunikoski, lead prosecutor against Ahmaud Arbery’s alleged killers, presents a slide about the use of deadly force during a summary.

Are from opening statement arrive the end of the summary, test of By Ahmaud Arbery The now-convicted murderers seem to focus on everything but race, an aspect of the case that has sparked global outrage and outcry.

Breaking her silence on that strategy, the main prosecutor of the case Linda Dunikoski explained on the podcast “Stay tuned: with Book in advance Bharara“That she didn’t want to alienate the nearly all-white jury in Georgia.

“People have implicit biases,” Dunikoski told prosecutor Bharara, who previously served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. “They just do. And some people know about it, and some people don’t. And some people, when called about it, are defensive and in denial. Because no one thinks they’re a racist and no one thinks they’re biased. And as soon as you start attacking people, you back them up, you put them on the defensive. ”

The jury found Arbery’s killers — the gunman Travis McMichael, his father Greg McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan, who shot the footage — including nine white women, two white men, and one black man.

Before the trial, Judge Timothy Walmsley found “apparently discriminatory” in the defense’s use of forced strikes, but he added that precedent was tied to his hand in addressing that issue.

Walmsley ultimately sentenced all three men to life in prison, ruling out a pardon for the McMichaels.

Dunikoski told Bharara that invoking the Confederate insignia on the gunman’s pickup number plate could backfire.

“The worst fear is, and I will take this as an example, pointing out over and over again that Travis McMichael has the stars and stripes, the old Georgian flag, on the front of his truck. Pointing that out to jurors could have backfired for us, especially if we had a female juror whose favorite grandchild had that in front of his truck, too. ” she said.

In the interview, Dunikoski describes being intentional with her boss — District Attorney Flynn Broady, the Negro – on his approach to the subject of race, and both saw no need to convict.

“What I did when we thought about this, I went to my boss and I said: Look, if everyone were green and everyone was in the same socioeconomic class and class, each other, what they did is still illegal,” she recounted on the show. . “And there is no justification, no excuse under the law, for what they did. So it doesn’t matter”.

According to Dunikoski, Broady replied: “I don’t want to turn us against them. I don’t want to turn this into a black and white thing. What they did was illegal. Show the jury that what they did was illegal. ”

Now that the state’s criminal trial is over, the race is likely to become more focused on ongoing civil and criminal cases. Arbery’s mother Wanda Cooper-Jones continue to pursue a federal civil action, on the one year anniversary of Arbery’s death, which accused Glynn County law enforcement of covering up her son’s murder. The lawsuit claims that Travis McMichael used a racial slur after he shot and killed Arbery.

Federal prosecutors also separately charged the men with violating Arbery’s rights, allegedly “because of the race and color of Arbery. ”

Listen to the podcast below:

(Screenshot of Dunikoski from Law & Crime’s newsletter about the trial)

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