Lawyers Seek Broad Jury Pool in Fed Case of Men Who Killed Ahmaud Arbery

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By Kelton Brooks Published: December 14, 2021

Lawyers Seek Broad Jury Pool in Fed Case of Men Who Killed Ahmaud Arbery

This photo combo of images taken Thursday, May 7, 2020, and provided by the Glynn County Detention Center, in Georgia, show Gregory McMichael, left, and his son Travis McMichael. The two have been charged with murder in the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, whom they had pursued in a truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood. (Glynn County Detention Center via AP)

In Summary

Prosecutors want to bring in potential jury members from an expansive area of Georgia that covers 43 counties in the high profile, racial justice case.

Attorneys in the federal hate crime trial of the three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery are asking for a wider jury pool in the high-profile case.

They want the jury pool search expanded to 43 counties in Georgia, with some regions clocking a four-hour drive from the courthouse to where the trial will take place.

On Thursday, both prosecutors and defense attorneys filed a joint motion in U.S. District Court to seek a more impartial jury in the federal case.

In November, father-and-son duo Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan were all found guilty by a Brunswick, GA. jury of felony murder for killing Arbery.

Arbery, 25, was killed while jogging in a Brunswick neighborhood in February 2020. He was chased, stopped, confronted and fatally shot by Travis McMichael, which was all captured on video filmed by Bryan.

Both McMichaels and Bryan face decades in prison, and in Travis McMichael’s case, for the rest of his life.

Travis McMichael was found guilty on all nine counts. The McMichaels and Bryan pleaded not guilty to the hate crime charges in May.

The federal case will be held in Glynn County, where Arbery was killed. The location was vital to casting a wider net into the jury pool.

In the filing, court rules permit potential jurors to be gathered from the Georgia Southern District, which contains over 1.6 million people. The Southern District covers 43 of Georgia’s 159 counties. The furthest county from the courthouse is Wilkes County, which is located more than 210 miles north of Brunswick.

“The parties believe that it is likely that many potential jurors from the Brunswick Division will have experienced sustained exposure to the case and may have formed immutable opinions, in one direction or the other, that will ultimately preclude them from sitting on a jury in this case,” the attorneys said in their legal motion.

Jury selection in the federal trial begins on Feb. 7.