BRUNSWICK, Ga. — The man who chased down and fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery sent messages to friends with “a theme of Black people being less than human,” a federal prosecutor told jurors Monday.
Travis McMichael, on trial with his father and a neighbor who shot the cellphone video of the shooting, referred to Black people as “animals, criminals, monkeys, subhumans, savages,” prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein said during opening statements of the hate crimes trial.
On Feb. 23, 2020, McMichael, his father Greg McMichael and co-defendant William “Roddie” Bryan joined in a chase of Arbery “based on the color of his skin,” said Bernstein, from the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Apologizing to jurors for the racial epithets she was about to say, Bernstein quoted from texts Travis McMichael sent to a friend.
“Zero (N-words) work with me,” he wrote. They ruined everything. That’s why I love what I do now. Not a (N-word) in sight.”
Bernstein told jurors they will learn how the three defendants talked about Black people “behind closed doors.”
Bernstein said Greg McMichael used racially incendiary language as well. As for Bryan, shortly before Arbery’s killing, he had learned his daughter was dating a Black man. In messages, Bryan repeatedly referred to that man as a “(N-word)” and a “monkey,” Bernstein told the jury.
It’s not illegal to use racial slurs, the federal prosecutor said. “But these slurs can provide you with evidence as to why a defendant did what he did,” she said.
Bernstein concluded by saying if the unarmed Arbery had been white, “he would have been home in time for Sunday dinner.” Instead, because he was a Black man, he found himself “bleeding to death, alone and scared, in the middle of the street.”
Defense attorney A.J. Balbo, who represents Greg McMichael, countered that both his client’s and his client’s son’s pursuit of Arbery was not racially motivated. They tried to apprehend him after seeing him enter a home under construction down the street, he said.
“Greg and Travis followed Ahmaud Arbery not because he was a Black man but because he was the man illegally entering the house under construction,” Balbo said.
McMichael, he conceded, used language “that will make people cringe. ... I’m not going to say Greg McMichael was an angel.” But it is important to put what he said into context, he said.
Balbo added, “The killing of Ahmaud Arbery was a tragic and horrible event that didn’t need to happen and could have been prevented in so many ways.”
Amy Lee Copeland, who represents Travis McMichael, told jurors she would be “lying” if she denied her client has sent racist messages.
“He has left a digital footprint,” she said. “My client uses words that I don’t use and expresses opinions that I don’t share.”
On the day of the killing, she said, McMichael was “trying to be a good neighbor.” And when the trial is over, she told jurors, she will ask them to return a verdict of not guilty.
Pete Theodocion, the last lawyer to address the jury, said he was not there “to excuse of defend racism. ... I won’t do it.”
The Augusta attorney, who represents Bryan, called “racist tropes, slurs, opinions the lowest of human emotion. ... What more ignorant can a human brain produce? It’s pathetic. It’s sad.”
Theodocion acknowledged that Bryan has used language that he’s embarrassed by and sorry for. But he contended Bryan is not obsessed with race and is not defined by it.
Bryan’s actions on the day of Arbery’s killing had “nothing to do with race,” Theodocion said. Bryan would have acted the same way if the man being pursued had been “white, Hispanic or Asian.”
Bryan saw a man who was being chased and “assumed he had done something wrong,” Theodocion said. “ ... He never wanted any physical harm to Mr. Arbery.”
Earlier Monday, eight white people, three Black people and one Hispanic person were chosen to serve as jurors in the federal hate crimes trial.
U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood wrapped up a week of jury selection by bringing in two final groups of prospective jurors for questioning ahead of the trial. She then let the prosecution and the defense exercise their strikes to arrive at 12 jurors and four alternates.
The four alternate jurors include three white people and one person who identifies as a Pacific Islander. The 16-member panel is made up of 11 women and five men, but neither the judge nor the attorneys told them who was selected as a trial juror and who was an alternate.
The McMichaels and Bryan were convicted of murder in a state case last fall. In January, the McMichaels were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole; Bryan, who filmed the cellphone video of Arbery collapsing in the street from two shotgun blasts, was given the possibility of parole.
Last year’s trial became mired in controversy after defense attorneys used their allotted strikes to eliminate 11 of the 12 prospective Black jurors from the qualified panel. That case was decided by a jury of 11 white people and one Black man.
The McMichaels and Bryan now face federal charges accusing them of interfering with Arbery’s rights and targeting him because he was Black. The maximum punishment for the hate crimes charges is life in prison. There is no parole in the federal system.
Before court adjourned for lunch, Travis McMichael’s attorney, Amy Lee Copeland, made a motion to have four of the five counts listed in the indictment dismissed on a technicality. Copeland argued the indictment was not properly certified. She also asked that the other count of the indictment, which accuses all three defendants of attempted kidnapping, to be dismissed for prejudice.
Wood said she will consider the motion later.
Because of intense pretrial publicity, Wood expanded the geographic region for the prospective jury pool to the entire 43-county Southern District of Georgia, instead of summoning jurors from the usual seven-county local area.
Wood has said she expects the trial to last seven to 12 days.
After court convened Monday morning, the judge told the jurors that she anticipates evidence of racial bias will be presented and she cautioned them, “I understand there is material that many may deem to be offensive may be introduced.”
She also told the them that they must consider only the evidence presented at trial and to follow her instructions. Before a final jury was selected, she asked the group of prospective jurors if they had made up their minds on the case and if they had done any independent research on it. No one said he or she had done so.
Of the more than 160 potential jurors questioned last week ahead of the federal trial, just about all of them were familiar with the case. And many expressed negative opinions about the three men standing trial. Those who said they could remain impartial and consider the evidence with an open mind were allowed to remain in the jury pool.
Those summoned to court were grilled about their exposure to the case, their views on race and the opinions they have formed since the 25-year-old Arbery was chased and killed on Feb. 23, 2020, in a neighborhood just outside Brunswick.
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