The Georgia Capitol Building. (Credit: DXR – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50257863)
ATLANTA (CN) The Georgia House voted unanimously Wednesday to repeal a Civil War-era citizen’s arrest law which allowed most citizens to arrest someone they suspected of having committed a crime.
House Bill 479 repeals a law originally passed in 1863 that has allowed private citizens to make arrests if a crime is committed in their presence “or within their immediate knowledge,” or if the arrestor had “reasonable” grounds to suspect a person had committed a felony offense.
The law was originally intended to allow white Georgians to recapture slaves. The law was often used during the lynching era to justify mob violence against Black people.
(Adds missing word in third paragraph to read Georgia General Assembly) By Rich McKay ATLANTA (Reuters) -Georgia overhauled a Civil War-era law Wednes.
Georgia has overhauled a Civil War-era law that allowed residents to arrest anyone they suspected of committing a crime – a “citizen’s arrest” law invoked by the defence of the three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery last year.
The Arbery case garnered international outrage, with civil rights activists saying it marked yet another example of a targeted attack on a Black man.
The Georgia General Assembly on Wednesday approved the bill across party lines by wide margins in both the House and Senate, and now it is headed to Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who has said he will sign it.