somehow, inspired the jury, dehumanize ahmed arbery, talking about his hygiene and that he was not a victim, that this would somehow resonate with the jurors. i would have to believe, given the verdict, that a result was just the opposite. these jurors took their duty seriously, and i think that the defense overplayed that hand, including all the shenanigans over the black, so-called black urging members. so that hurt them at the end. i think when they will find out certainly when the jurors are interview that it did hurt them. and mark i want to take you back to some of the that i mentioned earlier, and that was the citizens arrest law. which georgia repealed. which was used to defend those who killed all berry. how do you feel? how to police feel about these vigilantes, you think? first off, i think that there s a certain discomfort with referring to these
yeah, it s actually the defense that s brought up race a lot more. i m surprised the attorney didn t say those long dirty black toenails because you know that s what she meant. the prosecutors had smoking gun evidence of the defendant s racism including that after travis mcmichael pumped three bullets into mr. arbery, he called him the n word. the prosecutor said that she wasn t going to present the evidence to the jury unless the defense opened the door by claiming that they aren t racists. so i think this tragedy to leave out race was about what katy was talking about this virtually all white jury, the defense didn t want to look like the prosecution didn t want to look like they were injecting race in the case. joy, i would have thought to get this evidence in front of the jury for two reasons, first, the case is about racism andment sometimes it s important to name
arbery but i m not surprised because there is an idea in this case it was okay to chase down a man for five minutes who was black because he was running down the street fleeing for his life. but i want to point out something i think that is really important and why i still have faith in an ultimate conviction in this case, joy, and it s because there was no judge drama in this case unlike the kyle rittenhouse trial and the prosecution had the opportunity during closings and throughout the entirety of this case to call mr. arbery the victim because that is exactly what he was. versus the kyle rittenhouse trial where they were referred to as looters and other type of names and rioters so it s important that the break down of the county where this trial is taking place is important. it s 70% white, 26% black. jury selection took two and a half weeks. 1,000 perspective jurors and you only have one black juror on
regardless of what kind of toenails he had, what size legs he had, that was still my son. and my son actually was running for his life. what could possibly be the benefit of that argument for any defendant? well, i think it was a critical misstep by the defense attorney but if you re the defense attorney, you know what you re doing, you re dehumanizing the victim, right? you re making it so that the person who was the ultimate victim in this case ahmaud arbery didn t really have a lot of value so you re kind of suggesting to the jury, look, not only did he provoke this but at the end of the day, it s okay, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if you want to acquit my client because it really wasn t anything of value. it is beyond insulting to devalue and dehumanize mr.
that. i understand that we as defense attorneys, you have to represent your client and do it in a way where obviously you want to be vehement in your representation and you want to be a zealous advocate. that transcends the bounds of that because what is the relevance of that other than to dehumanize him, having the jury believe he s less than, speaking to what you got if you re the defense, which was an 11-member panel who are white jurors and one african american. but i still think, notwithstanding that composition, that that backfires because if you want to argue that, you know what? your clients were in heightened fear, they didn t know, they made a reasonable assumption that he really could have been the person who was committing crimes, you want to argue that, argue it but to completely annihilate, dehumanize and be so ince insensitive that moment, i think that backfires. i think we ll get a verdict as early as tomorrow. alan, what do you think? you are a jury consultant. you k