U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood stated Friday that she is ready to begin the trial with 64 individuals deemed qualified to serve impartial jurors. The pool will be reduced to 12 jurors plus four alternates Monday. On Monday, the judge expects that attorneys will make opening statements.
This will be the second trial that Brunswick, a port city on the Georgia coast south Savannah, has seen in Arbery’s murder since November when three of the same defendants were convicted in a Georgia state Court of murder.
After spotting Arbery running through their neighborhood on February 23, 2020, Travis McMichael and his father Greg armed themselves and chased him in a pickup truck. William “Roddie”, a neighbor, joined the chase in his truck and captured cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting at Arbery using a shotgun.
Until the video was posted online two months later, no arrests were made.
Last month, a judge sentenced Bryan and McMichaels to life imprisonment for their murder convictions. They are still facing federal hate crime charges. These allegations allege they violated Arbery’s civil rights and targeted him for being Black.
The federal case has been dismissed from all three defendants. According to the judge, she anticipates that the hate crime trial will last seven to twelve days.
More than 160 potential jurors were interviewed by the judge and his attorneys Monday through Friday. They came from 43 counties in southern and eastern Georgia. Nearly two thirds of them were dismissed because they had strong opinions about this case after viewing portions of the state murder trial, or news reports about the case.
One of the 64 members of the jury pool who returned to court Monday claimed they didn’t know much about the case. One of them is a man identified only as juror Number. 421, who told the judge Friday that he didn’t know much about the case except that it was a high-profile one and might have a video.
Others managed to convince the judge that they would not be held responsible for what they knew and instead hear the federal trial solely based on the evidence in court. One of them, identified as juror Number. 422, stated that she was not happy with Bryan and McMichaels because Bryan didn’t show remorse during the state trial. However, she said she believed she could still be fair.
Just one week after McMichaels announced that they would plead guilty to the federal case, attorneys said the McMichaels had agreed to a deal with prosecutors. was quickly disintegrated. Only one or two potential jurors indicated that they knew of this.
Defense attorneys claimed that the defendants had a right to chase Arbery after they suspected he was involved in crimes in their community. Travis McMichael stated that he fired in self-defense when Arbery attacked him with his fists, and then grabbed for the shotgun.
