I get where you’re coming from and I even agree with you in principle. But it’s the not being in “any way” responsible for initiating the encounter part that has me a bit worried. I suspect we may have wildly different ideas of what constitutes being in any way responsible for initiating it.
There’s always going to be some grey areas, but that’s part of what we pay judges for. But while there may be grey areas, and I’m sure we could come up with a few without much effort, there are also obvious black and white cases. Three yahoos running into a guy with a truck, yelling at him and waving guns about is pretty clear-cut.
The most relevant portion states:
(a) A person is justified in threatening or using force against another when and to the extent that he or she reasonably believes that such threat or force is necessary to defend himself or herself or a third person against such other’s imminent use of unlawful force; however, except as provided in Code Section 16-3-23, a person is justified in using force which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm only if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or herself or a third person or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
(b) A person is not justified in using force under the circumstances specified in subsection (a) of this Code section if he:
(1) Initially provokes the use of force against himself with the intent to use such force as an excuse to inflict bodily harm upon the assailant;
(2) Is attempting to commit, committing, or fleeing after the commission or attempted commission of a felony; or
(3) Was the aggressor or was engaged in a combat by agreement unless he withdraws from the encounter and effectively communicates to such other person his intent to do so and the other, notwithstanding, continues or threatens to continue the use of unlawful force."
The biggest issue, of course, is whether the three defendants are considered “the aggressor” in this situation. By any calculation, the defendants chasing Arbery with vehicles, hitting him with a car, cornering him, and drawing guns on him would clearly make them the aggressors. To avoid that, the defendants are arguing that they were not the aggressors because they were attempting to make a citizen’s arrest.
The problem with that is that to be authorized to make a citizen’s arrest, one must have a reasonable suspicion that the victim had committed a felony. There has been no evidence whatsoever that Arbery had committed a felony. In addition, the defendant’s suspicion of Arbery was not “reasonable” because it was based solely on the fact he was black and running through their subdivision.
Once the evidence is completed, the judge will have to decide if the defendant’s were entitled to make a citizen’s arrest, thus justifying their later role as aggressors. Barring some evidence I’m completely unaware of, they should not be so entitled, and the jury should be instructed that the defendant’s were not protected by the law for their being the aggressor in the situation.
Unfortunately, judges are very reluctant to deny a defendant the opportunity to raise even an unjustifiable defense. They’re too worried about being overturned on appeal and there is the whole “better 10 guilty men go free” metric to their decisions. So I’m guessing it will be up to the jury to decide. We will see.
And here is the relevant Citizen’s Arrest Law .
This law has now been changed. It was the law at the time the defendants took action and so is what they are being tried under. But it was tightened up several months ago to remove that blanket provision allowing anyone to arrest someone on suspicion of committing a felony and to largely limit use of deadly force. The original law dated to 1863 during the Civil War and apparently was originally primarily an anti-fugitive slave clause.
No matter how many times this claim is made, it remains not true.
The owner had sent the officer security camera videos of Arbery at the site five times between Oct. 25, 2019, and Feb. 23, 2020
Rash, who was a patrol officer assigned to the neighborhood, testified that he had shared the video clips with neighbors, including Gregory McMichael.
They didn’t pick a random black guy, they picked exactly who the police were looking for.
If so, it was for a trespass warning. Which was not a felony, and could not be the basis for a citizen’s arrest. If the police could only give a warning, not arrest, then citizens could not arrest either.
Good for them. They got lucky assuming this report is true*. They still should have followed Officer Rash’s instructions, per your own cite that a warning not an attempted arrest was what the authorities were pursuing, and reported what they saw instead of appointing themselves as “vigilante in chief.”
*This is The Post so that’s not a given but the AP seems to back this up.
Edit addition: There needs to be a complete re-examination and overhaul or elimination of the citizens arrest concept in law. It’s begging for abuse and conflict with very little justification from what i can see aside from outdated/fugitive slave laws.
Hey, Darren, this question is pretty near the heart of the disagreement. What do you think?
I don’t speak redneck, but I suspect that’s code for “this is a black guy.” They didn’t say if the police were as concerned about all the other visitors to the construction site.
Especially as I assume he was in running clothes. Like “what could this strange man in shorts and a t-shirt be doing running around at a steady pace? It’s uncanny!”
When you get around to dealing with the fact that there is no evidence that Arbery committed a felony, let me know. Because at this point, you’re just repeating the same debunked nonsense over and over.
And I’m not trying to question that. I will take it as given that the level of offense that Arbery was commiting did not rise to the level of allowing a legal citizen’s arrest, and that in that aspect the pursuers had and have no legal leg to stand on. What I’m addressing is the claim that their only reason for suspecting him was that he was black, when in fact they had been shown clear video of this specific person. And that evidence was allowed in court, and that video was shown to the jury.
How many of the multiple white trespassers did they hunt down and kill?
It wouldn’t matter what the authorities were or were not intending; this was not a situation in which a citizen’s arrest was legal.
I think that Arbery had to have been aware of why people were chasing him moments after he ran out of someone else’s house that he had been in several times, so no, I don’t think that.
Please point out where “they were shown footage of Arbury in the house, including at night, so knew what he looked like” has been debunked.
Georgia law disagrees with you. Arbery was, according to Georgia’s self defense statutes, justified in using deadly force.
Then so be it. In that case, he would have been the one sitting before a jury that has the final say on the issue instead of the other three guys.
Here’s the thing – based on the footage they’d been shown, would they have been able to pick Ahmaud out of a lineup of black joggers? When they saw him that day, which characteristics do you think they used to positively identify him as the same person in the security camera footage?
I’ll go ahead and cut to the chase – they were looking for a black guy, maybe of the same approximate build, but that’s it. They didn’t have a mugshot, or a yearbook photo, or anything like that. 90% of 25-year-old black men jogging through that neighborhood would have matched the information they’d been able to glean from that security footage.
This is why you’re arguing past people.
I don’t think you’ve thought this through.
If Georgia law says Arbery would have been justified in shooting them to defend himself, then had he done so he would not be sitting before a jury, since he would not have committed any crime. On the other hand, the reason these three are sitting before a jury is because what they did was a crime.