Arbery’s Killers Found Guilty of Murder by a Georgia Jury

All three of the White men charged in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery last year were convicted of murder by a jury in Georgia.

Someone in the courtroom let out a whoop as the first guilty verdict was read out by the judge, who stopped and asked for quiet. The jury’s finding follows a two-week trial over the February 2020 shooting, which was captured on video.

Prosecutors said 25-year-old Arbery was murdered “because he was a Black man running down the street,” echoing a 911 call one of the defendants made. Arbery’s name became a rallying cry in the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the U.S. last year.

Lawyers for the three accused said Arbery, who was unarmed, was shot in self-defense after he resisted the men’s attempt to carry out a citizen’s arrest under state law. Prosecutors said that defense was untenable because it was the three defendants who initiated the conflict by chasing Arbery down with a shotgun and their two pickup trucks.

The verdict comes less than a week after a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin, acquitted 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges in the shooting deaths of two men and the wounding of a third at a chaotic BLM protest last year. Rittenhouse also claimed self-defense in his case, in which all the main figures were White. That acquittal spurred small protests in several U.S. cities.

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