sobbed oh, her head sunk to her chest. that s when we had that break. that was when we had that pause before we had the rest of the verdict. clearly the family is relieved. this is also a community that has been relieved. when you look at the facts of the case, they were never in doubt. you had three white men, two of them armed, chasing after an unarmed black man, 25 years old, who was jogging. it was always the circumstances, and whether or not the jury was going to buy those circumstances of a citizens arrest. a 150-year-old law. understand this community has a great deal of mistrust on the local authorities. this was not a crime scene. they let the two pickup trucks go home that same day that ahmaud arbery was killed. you have photos from the scenes showing greg mcmichael talking
this nation. with the passing of georgia s first ever hate crime bill and the changing of georgia s antiquated citizens arrest law. we want to thank this community for the support that it has given to the family and to us. and the community at large. and we want to have some opportunity to have some remarks also from our team. so our senior assistant district attorney and lead attorney, linda donakowsky. [ cheers and applause ] thank you. thank you very much. but this was a team effort. i want everyone to know that this was a gigantic team effort. d.a. flynn brody put his faith
they all three now face life sentences. alexis, i want to hear your thoughts as well as what you think ended up being the most compelling piece of evidence. yeah. the most compelling piece of evidence is the fact that they hunted down a black man. i know other commentators have called this a modern day lynching and that s exactly what it was. it s no irony that they relied on this now repealed citizens arrest law. that was enacted in 1863 that really deputized private citizens to hunt down enslaved people and recapture and return them to slavery. and so that was undeniable. i know i have i was sort of remiss that the state didn t lean harder on that case, but that s essentially what carried the day. it was clear as a bell. and you have the defense instead that was using this dog whistle racially coded language. that ended up falling flat with
the evil and second, the jury needs to understand the motive. these defendants weren t these bumbling want to be cops. these defendants are straight up old school white supremacist and injected race in the case when they hunted down and killed a black man. and i feel like that s so obvious but i kind of can see why a prosecutor would think an all white jury isn t going to buy that because i said this in the previous segment. you have white americans that don t want to teach what the ku klux klan act is and get offended if you bring up the fact the founders owned slaves. in that country she might have been right the jury might have gotten offended if she brought up race. very quickly, let s talk about the citizens arrest law. you ve talked about this, paul. it is literally the guy who cobb county is named after helped write this law back to 1863. georgia is only second to mississippi in the number of lynchings after the civil war. georgia has a history. what do you make of the fact
second attacked him with a skateboard, and the third aimed a weapon at mr. rittenhouse, and the jury was persuaded. in this case, mr. arbery was unarmed. there was never any evidence that he posed any threat to these three defendants. what s your emergency? a black man running down the street is not a threat. but katy, in those words there is an american history of racial violence and white supremacy and unequal justice under the law. criminal trials are not instruments of social change but they can tell us something about social progress. and in georgia, in 2021, in one case, an african american man received equal justice under the law. and that counts as progress. let s talk about progress and let s bring in john burruss, criminal defense attorney, to address that. john, you famously represented rodney king, which led to the