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The gunman convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man in Georgia, repeatedly used racist language in text messages with friends, and also shared a music video of a white supremacist singer, jurors at his federal hate crimes trial heard on Wednesday. Travis McMichael, who along with his father and neighbor are on trial, left a racist digital footprint stretching back to at least 2013 and, in the case of the neighbor, continued even after the murder of Arbery, 25, in 2020, FBI agent Amy Vaughan, tasked with processing the digital evidence in the case, told jurors. Arbery's killing was one of several of Black men and women, often at the hands of police, that helped spark racial justice protests in recent years.
The federal judge presiding over the hate crimes trial of three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery said she would seat a jury Monday after a week spent asking potential jurors what they already know about the Black man’s death as well as their views on racism in America. U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood said she's ready to start the trial once a pool of 64 people deemed qualified to serve as impartial jurors is narrowed to a panel of 12 plus four alternates on Monday. It will be the second time the port city of Brunswick, on the Georgia coast south of Savannah, has held a trial in Arbery's killing since November, when the same three defendants were convicted of murder in a Georgia state court.
A lung specialist took the stand Monday as the federal trial of three former Minneapolis police officers charged with violating George Floyd’s rights resumed after being abruptly suspended last week because one defendant tested positive for COVID-19. J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao are accused of depriving Floyd of his rights when they failed to give him medical aid as Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the Black man’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes while Floyd was handcuffed, facedown and gasping for air. Kueng and Thao are also accused of failing to intervene in the May 2020 killing that triggered protests worldwide and a reexamination of racism and policing.