Closing Arguments Open In Ahmaud Arbery U.S. Hate-crimes Trial

The three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery acted out of racial animosity when they chased down the young Black man as they saw him jogging through their Georgia community, a federal prosecutor told jurors at the defendants' hate-crimes trial on Monday.

Arbery, 25, out for a Sunday afternoon run, was seen as a criminal by the three men who pursued him to his death for no other reason but the color of his skin, Christopher Perras, a special litigation counsel for the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division, said in closing arguments.

"They were motivated by racial assumption, racial resentment and racial anger," Perras said, referring to the defendants - Travis McMichael, 36; his father, former police officer Gregory McMichael, 66; and neighbor William "Roddie" Bryan, 52.

"They saw a Black man in their neighborhood and they thought the worst of him," Perras told the predominantly white jury in U.S. District Court in Brunswick, Georgia.

Perras cited trial testimony showing the defendants had a long history of making overtly, sometimes violently racist comments about Black people in text messages, social media and conversations with others.

Defense lawyers countered that their clients believed they recognized Arbery from previous videos showing a person matching his description lurking on four occasions around a vacant house under construction amid a series of property thefts in the community.

"If you ask, 'Would these defendants have grabbed guns and done this to a white guy?' and the answer is yes," said defense lawyer Amy Lee Copeland, representing Travis McMichael, the man who fired the three shotgun blasts that killed Arbery.

She said the record of past derogatory statements made by her client about Black people failed to prove his actions on the day of Arbery's killing were racially motivated.

Copeland said prosecutors presented no evidence that her client "ever spoke to anyone about Mr. Arbery in racial terms" or used a racial slur on the day of the killing. And she added that the government never connected McMichael to any white supremacist or hate groups.

Copeland further argued that acts of vigilantism did not in and of themselves constitute a hate crime.

A.J. Balbo, the attorney Gregory McMichael, argued that the defendants were motivated by a desire to protect their neighborhood, not race.

Pete Theodocion, Bryan's attorney, argued the evidence of racism was merely "circumstantial."

All three men are charged with violating Arbery's civil rights by attacking him because of his race, as well as with attempted kidnapping. The McMichaels are additionally charged with a federal firearms offense.

The hate-crimes felony, the most serious of the charges, carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The three men have already been convicted in state court of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

The Arbery slaying, caught on cellphone video, was one of several killings of Black men and women - often by police - that helped reignite racial justice protests in recent years. The federal prosecution is the first in which those who carried out such a high-profile killing are facing a jury in a hate-crime trial.

RACIAL ILL WILL

The federal lawyers sought to prove the three acted out of racial ill will, buttressing their argument with a parade of witnesses and a digital record of text statements and social media posts stretching back almost a decade.

On Friday, the prosecution presented testimony from witness Carole Sears, who is white, that in 2015 Gregory McMichael went on a rant against Black people after she remarked that civil rights standard-bearer Julian Bond had died.

She recalled him saying, "I wish that guy had been in the ground years ago," and "All those Blacks are nothing but trouble, and I wish they'd all die."

Travis McMichael had shared numerous racist messages online and once posted a video of a Black child dancing on Facebook, adding the song "Alabama Nigger" by Johnny Rebel, a recording artist whose work supported white supremacy.

Another white prosecution witness, Kristie Ronquille, testified on Friday that Travis McMichael, then her supervisor in the U.S. Coast Guard, subjected her to racist and sexual insults in 2011 after learning she had once dated a Black man.

As for Bryan, numerous text messages and other online posts showed a long history of racist slurs and comments.

In text messages with a friend, Bryan said he was upset his daughter had started dating a Black man, and he used a racial epithet. In other online messages, he referred to celebrations on Martin Luther King Jr. Day as "monkey parades" and used other slurs.