thanks for being with us. elie, your top takeaways. i thought the prosecutor was masterful. there were not many dramatics, what you see in movies but in the real world prosecutors are trained to be concise and well-organized and we saw that out of the prosecutor said. the other thing is she was thematic. show kept on hitting on the key themes in very concise little snippets. they made assumptions. they made driveway decisions he was unarmed. he ran away. they chased him down and they attacked him. that kind of very simple well-supported phrase is something that the jury tends to take into the jury room with them and remember. now on the defense side, i thought the defense lawyer was effective as well. his job was to spin the counternarrative and he made the argument that his client had reason to think a crime was committed and believed he was under attack. the problem is a lot of that depended on travis mcmichael s own testimony which i think was heavily undermined during the cross-e
argument assumes that they had a right to stop ahmaud arbery and keep in mind there was never any testimony that they said they were trying to effectuate a citizen s arrest. the prosecutor i think did a brilliant job of saying this is all made up. this is a fantasy that was created by the lawyers after the fact some 18 months later. there was nothing happening at the time of this encounter with ahmaud arbery or when travis mcmichael gave his police statement to suggest that he was engaged in any kind of citizen s arrest so i think the saturday a stretch and if you use your common sense which is what the prosecutor keeps reminding the jurors to do, i don t think they are going to buy that argument. elie, there are three different defendants. right now we ve really only heard from travis mcmichael s defense lawyer. they are all represented by different lawyers. do you expect other defense attorneys to present something different in their closing arguments? i do, ana. so what happens
case. travis mcmichael tried to investigate a white guy sleeping under the bridge and took issue with the white couple that went into the house, but the problem is he didn t get no his truck with a shotgun and dad in the bed with a .357 magnum and chase down the white people in this neighborhood and then ultimately shoot and kill them so race is a part of this case but i think the prosecutor was smart to use it in the way that she did during her closing argument. thank you. please stand by as we re going to be returning to court just as soon as they get back from lunch. that should happen here in the next 15, 20 minutes or so. also breaking today. president biden renominating jerome powell to lead the federal reserve for a second term as the nation struggles to fight rights inflation. we will hear from bolt of them in just moments. plus, a horrific end to a holiday celebration. a driver plows into a christmas parade killing at least five people hurting dozens of others. ten kid
who they will see as the main culprit here, if they apply to the other defendants, but i do think the prosecutor did a good job to. use that analogy of everybody gets a super bowl ring, you know. driving home that point that everybody on the team, whether, you know, you re on that field or not okay you are celebrating as the game is won, and in this case everyone that par tis paid, that encouraged, that encried the or aid or abetted is responsible and i think the jurors got that. i think she used such good analogies to drive home her point of what could be very complicated legal issues she made them very relatable to the jury. the prosecutor s argument was succinct, only lasted about an hour so she have the last word with a rebuttal. she has about two hours left in her time. is it a good strategy to leave that much time on the schnabel. i think, ana. juries have very limited attention spans. they are human beings. the rule of thumb we used to use is you re going to lose your
jury 45 minutes or so in. if you have to go longer, fine, but want to keep it succinct, and i think what the prosecutor is doing she knows she will have to clean up after three different defense closings so i hi she s leaving herself enough room to address in more detail what we ll hear from the three defense attorneys. areva, given all the racial underattorney generals the prosecutor mentioned raise only directly once in her closing argument. what do you make that have? i think it was smart. i think you re in new york, i m in los angeles. this case is in brunswick, georgia. there are 11 white people on this jury. there s only one person of color, so to make this case solely about race i think would have been a mistake for this prosecutor as much as most of us who do this for a living, a civil right lawyer, know it s all about ration, but i think in terms of trying to keep the jury focused on the facts of this case, that was smart on her