are you a christian author with a book that you re ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! good evening. answered prayer. that s how the mother of ahmaud arbery described today s verdict for the three men found guilty of murdering her son. arbery was gunned down last year while jogging through a suburban georgia neighborhood. the verdict was huge, she said. a vindication for her and her family that was anything but inevitable. i m john berman, in for anderson. obstacles included the original prosecutors, one of whom is now under indictment for her alleged actions. and another who once told police that the actions of the father and son convicted today of murder were, quote, perfectly legal. no one was charged for the murder for more than two months, not until video of that deadly
an attorney who helped him do it, alan tucker, said the mcmichaels believed the video would clear them in the minds of the public from any wrongdoing. back with us, bakari sellers and sara azari. sara, let me just start with you. this video, without the video, do you think the verdict ever would have been reached? no, john. this video i mean, first of all, video evidence is the best evidence, right? just imagine if, without this, this jury believed travis mcmichael s testa-lying about the struggle with the gun, about the citizen s arrest. i mean, this verdict would be completely different and and i think that s why it gave me some comfort earlier in the day when when the jurors came out and asked to watch the video. because that that just told the whole story. and to your point, the level of privilege of these three murderers who believed they were exonerated by this video. i mean, this video was anything but exculpatory, right? and they walked around for
guilty was a word that many feared they might not ever hear in this case. count one, malice murder. we, the jury, find the defendant travis mcmichael guilty. oh! i m going to ask whoever just made an outburst be removed from the court, please. reporter: loved ones for ahmaud arbery overcome with emotion this afternoon as all three defendants were found guilty of murder by a jury of nine white women, two white men, and one black man. the judge read through all nine counts for each defendant. guilty. reporter: travis mcmichael, the man who shot and killed arbery, claiming it was self-defense, was found guilty on all nine counts. his father, gregory mcmichael, was found not guilty on one charge but guilty on the other eight. guilty. reporter: william roddie bryan jr., the man who took the video of the shooting, was found guilty on six counts. guilty. reporter: people outside the courthouse rejoiced.
for the prosecution was ahmaud arbery who, of course, was dead. but the only way he was able to speak up, the only way his voice was able to be heard was actually through this video. and it was, oh, so ironic and it was said earlier by my colleague. it s so ironic that this video was shot by individuals who murdered him. this wasn t a bystander video. this wasn t a surveillance video. they literally shot this video, and then released it themselves under the audacity and the privilege that it would get them off. but it again, i mean, john, ask yourself the question, does this case actually go to a jury, do we have this semblance of accountability if, in fact, there s no video? and the answer to that case resoundingly is no. yeah, i don t think because the word of these white men yeah, the word of these white men would have been taken as what they thought they were, which was superior. sara, the defense has said they are going to appeal this verdict. any scenario you see that w
merritt said on your network earlier today that this verdict is an anomaly. it cannot be an anomaly. i mean, i can t tell you the countless ahmaud arberys that i have represented, have come across in the course of my career, who have been utterly screwed by the system because of the color of their skin. because they don t have a video and because they are dealing with a prosecutor who won t do his damn job. and so, we can t sit down, especially those of us who work in the criminal justice system, this one verdict and one trial is not definitely not systemic change, by any means. but it is accountability, bakari. and i want you to talk a lit bit more about the significance of accountability here. i mean, what it shows is that and this is the bright spot, and i you know, i ve been weighing this in my head and hesitant about how to talk about it, but look, the fact is, 11 white jurors in south georgia saw the facts as presented by an outstanding prosecutor, a very fair and able ju