to say, this neighborhood used to be safe and it became scary. and it became scary, and then they started talking about ahmaud arbery. that really is a conversation about race, but it s their effort, particularly travis, because travis mcmichael is the one who pulls the trigger three times. he s trying to say, i really did have reason to believe and fear, and i m going to go back to a prior incident where we think we saw him and we think we saw him do something bad. the thing that we saw when this prosecutor so effectively did her rebuttal today was to go back to the person who is arguably the weakest link, but he s still a link. he says, all i did was film, i was just there filming. and she says, that s what he s telling you now, but he told police that he took his truck, he blocked ahmaud arbery his run so that he was trapped. greg mcmichael said to a police
right now let s go to the state of georgia where a jury is deliberating on three men accused of killing ahmaud arbery. we have closing arguments from three lawyers, one for each of the defendants. in response to the defense s claims of self-defense to a citizen s arrest gone wrong. they do not get to claim self-defense. and, of course, provocation. you can t force someone to defend themselves against you, so you get to claim self-defense. he is just as big of a murderer as travis mcmichael is because he was an accomplice. who gets to say, i m not
pulled the trigger. he is the one who fataled shot arbery. greg mcmichael was driving a pickup truck, bryan was driving a pickup truck. they argue they hemmed him in with their pickup trucks. do you think we ll see a verdict on this, first, and if we do, how will it play out? there is always the possibility of a split verdict. remember, we have malice murder, we have felony murder. the felony murder is the key, because if they find there was a felony committed, then it s felony murder, then they re all three in it. i think that s why i want to go back to kristen s important point here. when travis mcmichael took the stand, his entire strategy was
it doesn t require expertise, it doesn t require a judge s interception, and it stands for the politics and mindsets of jurors in the entire judicial system and in their analysis to determine was it reasonable that a white man in a pickup truck who then points his gun in the face of a black man, was all of that reasonable, all because he was a black man jogging? all because he was a black man jogging and refused to stop and a man was pointing a gun at him. to me that s absolutely reasonable. as a black person in society, that s absolutely reasonable. but will it be reasonable in the minds of someone who doesn t have the common experiences of myself as a black american? and that s what we really need to reckon with in our society as jurors interpret the law. that is a really interesting point. maya, let s talk about the three different defendants here. they all are charged with multiple counts individually, but they all played different at least slightly different roles in this case
responsible for that? in the state of the georgia, no one gets to say that. everyone is responsible. ladies and gentlemen, here s the thing. this isn t about whether these three men are good people or bad people. that s not what this is about. it s about responsibility. it s about holding people accountable and responsible for their actions. the panel isn t just tasked with determining the fate of one defendant but all of them, each with their own charges, each with their own potential outcome. travis mcmichael, who pulled the trigger, his father gregory mcmichael who drove the truck in pursuit of arbery, and bryan who drove the truck to track him down. there was a single juror who