Ahmaud Arbery Is The Exception

Content Warning: this article discusses the lynching of a Black man in broad daylight. It’s very upsetting.

Joe Biden echoed Dunikoski’s sentiment in his White House press release. “While the guilty verdicts reflect our justice system doing its job,” he said, “that alone is not enough. Instead, we must recommit ourselves to building a future…where no one fears violence because of the color of their skin.”

This verdict will not return Arbery to the world of the living. Of course justice in the courtroom is not enough. But, according to Biden, justice does happen. Routinely. That’s why we call it the justice system.

(We’re not going to even get into the ridiculous shit conservatives had to say about the implications of the Arbery murder trial verdict: namely that it proves racism does not exist and the Left, as usual, is making everything about race for political reasons, next up Tucker Carlson on why Critical Race Theory will murder your grandchildren)

In one way, at least, Biden and Dunikoski are absolutely right: the Ahmaud Arbery trial is a perfect example of the way the American legal system works. 

But that’s not a good thing. When you look at the process itself, it becomes apparent that Arbery’s killers received justice despite the system, not because of it.

The Lynching

You know what happened. Everybody does.

Arbery went for a jog. As many of us have done, he stopped to take a look at a construction site, because construction sites are cool. He did not steal anything. He carried on with his run. 

Meanwhile, a couple of vile putrescent bastards called 911 because, and I quote, “There’s a Black guy running down the street.” 

Then, Greg McMichaels and his son Travis took the law into their own hands. Grabbed their guns, chased Arbery down in their truck and, with the help of their neighbor William Bryan, trapped Arbery in the middle of the street. 

They got out of their cars, guns in hand. And when Arbery, correctly terrified for his life, tried to defend himself, Greg McMichaels shot him at point-blank range. Arbery takes two steps forward, wobbles, and collapses.

As his life ebbed from his broken body, the last thing Arbery heard was the angry, hateful voice of Travis McMichael:

“Fucking n*****” 

Ahmaud Arbery was 25 years old.

On February 28th, the Brunswick News released details as relayed by the police report. The case file, they reported, was "about 70 percent done.” Open and shut. All they really needed to do was review surveillance footage from the construction site and run a toxicology report for Arbery. Not the men who killed him, mind you. Just Arbery. Who, the article makes sure to point out, had a criminal past: four years probation for carrying a handgun at a school basketball game and one year’s probation for shoplifting.

Case might as well be closed.

The only unusual thing with the investigation was that, in an abundance of caution, District Attorney Jackie Johnson chose to recuse herself. You see, Greg McMichael had recently retired from over 20 years as an investigator for the Brunswick DA office. Everyone in the county justice system knew the guy. Worked closely with him

We’ll circle back to that job later.

Arbery’s family tried to organize for justice. They reached out to local officials. They started a Facebook page. They tried to get hashtags going. The officials never got back to them. Their online efforts got lost in the noise of the Internet.

How many similar Facebook pages do you suppose are out there? How many brokenhearted mothers, how many grieving families, screaming their outrage into the void and receiving nothing but silence?

99 percent of the time, the story ends here.

This time, it didn’t. 

Media Jackpot

On April 26th, Atlanta-based correspondent Richard Fausset broke three months of media silence with a New York Time article about the shooting.

While the media slept, the Brunswick county prosecutor determined that the murderers “had acted within the scope of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest statute.” That Travis McMichael “had acted out of self-defense.”

Like the DA, state prosecutor George Barnwell knew McMichaels well. Yet only after pressure from Arbery’s family did he step down and hand the case to the next county over.

When Barnwell sent the files, however, he included a long note with his analysis and recommendations. The video evidence, he explained, showed Arbery burglarizing the house under construction. Another video, not released to the public, showed Arbery attacking Greg McMichael. Neither of those things were true, as it turned out.

Barnwell also highlighted Arbery’s (nonviolent, minor) criminal past and “mental health issues” to explain why Arbery would charge a man with a shotgun. Those mental health issues consisted entirely of a 2018 diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. This diagnosis came not by licensed psychiatrists, as you might expect for such a complex and rare condition, but by two nurses after a 2-hour evaluation. One of those nurses learned to diagnose mental illness through an online course.

Real compelling stuff.

A few minor outlets picked up the story. CBS news ran a spot on it. Brunswick News broke the 911 call transcript (“There’s a Black guy running down the street”). A local news station revealed that the police report did not specify whether Arbery was armed at time of death. 

Despite these irregularities, the story slowly began to peter out. By attaining national news coverage, this case had already beaten the odds. Again 99% of stories that make it this far die here. No justice for the victims. No peace for the families.

Luckily for us, William Bryan is an idiot.

The Video

You’ve seen it.

A car speeds down a country road. A man in a white shirt, jogging. A pickup truck pulls up ahead of him. The runner tries to go around it. A man gets out. The camera wobbles. Arbery, bursts back into frame. His hand clings to the barrel of McMichael’s shotgun in an attempt to move it away from his abdomen while he punches McMichaels in the head. Then he turns. Takes two steps.

And collapses.

William Bryan, the third murderer, took that video. And then, on May 5th, he leaked that video to the press.

Apparently, Bryan thought the video would exonerate them. And why wouldn’t he? The DA had that video the whole fucking time. It’s the video Mr. Barnwell referred to in his letter as proof of self-defense.

Bryan’s incredible decision to release this footage is the only reason any of us are talking about Ahmaud Arbery right now. According to prosecutors and law professors, if Bryan had kept that video to himself, those three killers would be walking free today.

Within hours of the video’s release, the governor stepped in and the county finally arrested the two McMichaels. Bryan’s arrest occurred a few days later. 

The Trial

The video was clear-cut. All the evidence the DA sat on for months pointed to the guilt of the three bastards who lynched a Black man for running in their neighborhood.

But all was not lost for the guilty parties. The defense team did everything they could to stack the deck so their clients could walk.

You probably remember lurid headlines from when the Arbery defense team attempted to expel Black pastors from the audience gallery because they claimed these scary men would intimidate the jurors. 

You may also remember the way the murderers’ defense team portrayed Arbery during the trial. In the words of Laura Hogue, a White [REDACTED] with bleach blonde hair and a scabrous soul:

These vile statements pale, however, in comparison to the real power move, which happened early. During jury selection,  the defense team dismissed 11 of 12 qualified Black jurors so that the ultimate jury consisted of 11 White people and 1 Black person. 25 percent of Brunswick County is Black

I wrote a whole article about the jury selection process in the Arbery trial and beyond. Why, despite the judge’s statement that the jury dismissals were likely rooted in racial bias, he could legally do nothing about it. Many studies show that the racial composition of juries has a large and measurable impact on conviction rates for cases involving Black people.

Every day, across the country, juries skew White and wealthy. It does not make the news. Why would it?

And yet…

The Exception

Despite the initial coverup for the murderers.

Despite police and DA stonewalling.

Despite the defense attorneys’ best efforts to stack the deck in the courtroom.

Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers will likely die in prison.

And thank God. For justice. For whatever peace this verdict brings to the family. For this tiny scrap of due process.

But many cases have this much going for them? Video evidence and viral attention and the largest social justice protest America has seen since the 1960s?

How many cases never get past the county coverup stage?

I mentioned earlier that Greg McMichaels worked as a district attorney investigator for Brunswick. I was not familiar with this job, so I looked it up.

For over 20 years, McMichaels investigated and collected evidence for felony cases in Brunswick county. He analyzed crime reports. And he decided what cases warranted additional investigation and which ones were open-and-shut. 

How much impartiality do you suppose Greg McMichaels exercised when he decided which cases required further investigation? How thorough do you suppose his evidence collection was when it came to “fucking n*****s”? 

How many people are in jail because of him? How many people cannot secure a good job or vote because of felony convictions he facilitated? How many lives has he ruined? How many murderers walk free thanks to his tireless twenty-plus years of public service?

How many people just like him work in DA offices across the nation?

Broken

So no, Mr. Biden. No, Ms. Dunikoski. The legal system does not work. 

For Black people in this country, the legal system produces justice in the same way that the lottery produces millionaires. The odds might be a bit different. The principle is the same.

This is not justice. This is not a functional system. The problem is systemic and, with a few rare occasions, silent.

Donate to the NAACP. Donate to the ACLU. Donate to your local activist organizations. Get out in the streets when you can. Do all that band-aid shit, because every life saved from the meat-grinder of our justice system means something.

But also, start thinking systemically.

It’s a tall order. We don’t have a lot of coherent visions right now for a better world than this one. But visions and dreams are how revolutions begin. Crazy ideas. Things that will never, ever work. 

We have to start dreaming. We have to start organizing. We have to expose this system, at every turn, for exactly what it is. Make people angry. Shock them out of complacency. Create a climate where the current situation feels as untenable as it truly is. 

We have to believe that a better world is possible.

And then we have to find it.

The Weekly is a substack about whatever I want. Sometimes it’s like this. Sometimes it isn’t. Subscribe and get one every Tuesday.