standard than what you even need to find in this case. certainty was way more knowledge than they needed to detain ahmaud arbery to execute a citizens arrest and that was greg mcmichael s intent. he said it from the very beginning. he was asked by the investigator parker marcy testified to you, what was your intent had he stopped? and he said as clear as a bell, hold him for the police so that he could be arrested. the judge will charge you that a private citizen can effectuate an arrest, detaining someone for the police to arrive if a crime happens within his knowledge, oops, there is the other one, or
intention to take the life of another human being where all of the circumstances of the killing show that an individual acted with an abanned and malignant heart. the state will have to be asking you to find that greg mcmichael advised or encouraged travis mcmichael, his son, to take the life of ahmaud arbery because that s what he wanted to do. for no reason other than to see that young man die and to see him die at hands of his own son, and to do it, right there in front of his eyes because the guy keeps breaking down,
pulls out the gun and is pointing it at the clerk, and the clerk is like, ah, and the clerk goes and tries to hit the gun away and starts punching at the armed robber, and what s the armed robber do? boom, kills the clerk. in committing a felony, you cannot claim self-defense. you ve now murdered the clerk, because during the felony that you were doing, you pointed a you were doing an armed robbery, you were pointing a gun at somebody. you expect when you re commit ing felonies, people are going the fight back? imagine in armed robbers could come in and go, well, i had to defend myself against the victim of my crime. can you imagine that s the law? but isn t that what they re saying? how dare mr. arbery defend himself against their four felonies. isn t that what they re saying you? so felony murder. what is felony murder?
d.o.t., it s about seeking the truth. and it s not beyond all doubt or to a mathematical certainty. no, no, no, it s just beyond a reasonable doubt. and that s the burden that the state has. so the evidence. the first thing you ll want to do is determine what really happened based on the evidence, but a lot of the evidence isn t in dispute, right? we know dwhas larry english called the police. we know when we have videos. we know this was on february 23rd. the homicide is on video for the most part, okay? a lot of these things are not necessarily in dispute what s in dispute is were they making a citizen s arrest in committing these felonies against ahmaud arbery and then murdering him. the police arrived very quickly.
law becomes intertwined in heartache and tragedy. because you do have the right to perform a citizen s arrest. you do have the right to have a firearm when you make an arrest. you do have the right to stop a person and to hold them and to detain them for police, and there is risk with that, and there are tragic consequences that can come from that. reporter: ana, as can you imagine, this has been tough for both families when it comes to everything that has been happening inside the court. we do know at one point that ahmaud arbery s mother walked out of court as they were talking and showing pictures so when you put all of this together you understand the pressure on this community, especially as these closing arguments continue. ana? ryan young, thank you. with us now is cnn senior legal analyst ely hopig, former prosecutor and areva martin.