take a look at this. he told you he s not going to chase or investigate someone who is armed. and yet all he talked about was, well, he kept reaching in his pants, he kept reaching in his pocket. well, did you think he was armed or not? then what d he tell you? this is what i was thinking. mr. arbery may have run by, maybe matt had seen him. maybe he has broken in. maybe larry english is over at 220. i don t know. maybe ahmaud arbery was caught. maybe ahmaud arbery is running from the police. these are all maybes. he doesn t know anything. these are all the maybes he testified to. he said he assumed he was committing a crime. that s what he said on the stand. remember, i wrote it out. you said, you assumed you were committing a crime. i went down there to see if it was him. then he said, i don t know. i don t know what he did that day. i don t know. then he wanted to talk about his totality of the circumstances and all that stuff that he knew that was going to allow him to do
Of that? told the police he got out of his house on holmes a few houses down and yelled at ahmaud to stop. now he says that didn t happen, and his convenient excuse was, i was really confused. what d he say the coast guard goals were, to not escalate, but to keep everyone calm and cool. you don t want anything to escalate. but then he tells you, oh, but you pull out a shotgun and point it at somebody to de-escalate a situation. what are you talking about? does this logic make any sense to anybody? travis mcmichael never said to the police, i was making an arrest. i was trying to arrest him for the crime of this. wouldn t that really, really important? hey, i was trying to effectuate a citizen s arrest for this crime that i know he committed. wouldn t that be something that you would tell the police? never once. never told mr. arbery that he was under arrest. never said, i saw him commit the crime of blank, today, because he didn t. he was sitting on his sofa. never said, i was afra
Encouraged someone to commit the crime. and of course, you re saying, but linda, only one person had their finger on the trigger in this case, and that was travis mcmichael. so how do we find greg mcmichael and william bryan guilty of malice murder? under the law in georgia, it s as if they were all holding the gun together. and in this example, the guy who never got out of the car who s the getaway driver just as guilty. in this example, the guy who got out of the car and just stood at the front of the bank is just as guilty. party to a crime. so under the law, all are involved. why? greg mcmichael, he was seeking to confront ahmaud arbery. he was encouraging travis mcmichael to come with him, encouraging travis to cut him off. greg mcmichael threatened ahmaud to get him to stop. okay? we would not be here if it weren t for greg mcmichael. travis mcmichael. without travis mcmichael deciding to actually take his
there s a black man running down the street. you know, so powerful, in part because there was a lot of evidence about the racism of the defendants that the prosecution couldn t get in, including literally smoking gun evidence that travis mcmichael, who was the actual shooter, after he pumped those three bullets into mr. arbery s body, said the n-word. that s what he said. the jurors never heard about that. but when she has a theme in this closing statement and rebuttal, what s your emergency? there s a black man running down the street. that communicates some of the concerns about the bias of the defendants that motivated this heinous act. cal, what s the environment outside the courthouse? reporter: you know, today, it s been very, very quiet.
Facts as you find them to be. it is your duty to follow the law as stated in the instructions i have given you and am about to give you. you should not single out one instruction alone, but must consider all the instructions as a whole. you have a sworn duty to decide this case based upon the law given you by the court and upon the evidence submitted during the trial. the defendants, travis mcmichael, gregory mcmichael, and william r. bryan, in this case, have been indicted each individually and as parties concerned in the commission of a crime, by the grand jury of this county for the offenses of malice murder, felony murder, four counts, aggravated assault, two counts, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit a felony. the indictment was returned into court on june 24th of 2020. you will have the indictment with you at the end of the case.