So, I saw the Ahmaud Arbery killing, and it definitely appears a crime occurred, but from a legal perspective it isn't obvious to me what the killers, Gregory and Travis McMichael, should actually be charged with that there is a reasonable chance they would be found unanimously guilty by a jury of their peers.

It appears in Georgia it is actually legal for civilians to chase after unarmed people with guns in order to make a citizens arrest? (This seems like a Georgia Fail as much as anything) Is this actually true?

And then at the end the video it does appear Arbery tried to reach for gun to wrest it away, at which point there was a struggle where he was shot 3 times.

With the information we have, from Arbery's perspective it seems reasonable for him to assume his life was in imminent danger and trying to disarm Travis McMichael was his best option.

But taking what the McMichaels say at face value, that they were just trying to do a citizen's arrest until the police arrived (which seems to be corroborated by a call they made to police while they chased Arbery), once Arbery tries to disarm Travis it seems reasonable that Travis assumed his life was in danger and firing in self defense was legally warranted.

I understand where all the outrage is coming from. But from a real world legal perspective what is the actual legal play? I noticed that both Biden and Bernie Sanders tweeted on the issue demanding justice, but they were very light on specifics how exactly to go about this through the legal system.

The video I saw ends with what looks like two people wrestling over a gun. Does it end right then because Arbery is shot at that point? I guess it would make a difference in the sentencing phase if Arbery actually got the gun away from him. But yeah, lol, Georgia law. Guy is dead because of the actions of those two.

According to wikipedia Georgia doesn't have 1st, 2nd or 3rd degree murder but "Murder, Felony murder".

2010 Georgia Code: TITLE 16 - CRIMES AND OFFENSES; CHAPTER 5 - CRIMES AGAINST THE PERSON; ARTICLE 1 - HOMICIDE

And Georgia's hate crime laws are non-existant as of 2004.

Daily mail has links to a longer edit of the video than most other sites. It shows 3 shots going off during what appears to be the men wrestling each other for the gun, and then Arbery stumbling and falling down. (The confrontation starts off camera because it is behind the truck, but based on his momentum it does appear Arbery was trying to wrestle the gun away from the other guy, which wouldn’t even be unreasonable given the guys were chasing him down in a truck and then pulled guns on him)

But Yeah. Given Georgia’s laws it is not clear what the charge would even be.

Just sort of skimmed and don't know anything about this. How about manslaughter?

Well question 1 is whether involuntary manslaughter would be good enough for all the people demanding justice? One of the guys running for president of the United States just tweeted it was cold blooded murder in his opinion. Seems like it is hard to be ok with manslaughter once you go out on that bridge.

And then the second issue is that manslaughter conviction requires demonstrating McMichael was doing something unlawful.

As absurd as it sounds, it really does seem that there are circumstances where it is perfectly lawful in Georgia for a civilian to chase someone down, who had not committed any violent crime or posed any imminent threat, with a gun and hold them at gunpoint. And it seems the crux of a potential case would be whether McMichael's actions up to the point Arbery tried to wrestle the gun from him were lawful or not.

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like voluntary manslaughter from what I read.

saw the video, the dude was jogging, I dont know all teh details and what have you but i dont get why they tried to stop him.

I hope more gets shed to light and justice is served.

didnt seem like the jogger was committing a crime at all

Cite?

Random post on a Georgia gun forum, not the most credible source but a clue pointing to the possibility that one can not simply go around arresting people at gun point all willy nilly.

Also, Georgia has a stand your ground law, but it would be in favor of Ahmaud Arbery if he were carrying, since he was the one ambushed at gunpoint. It doesn't seem logical that the stand your ground law could be invoked as a defense by the one's who initiated the threat in the first place.

https://************news.com/news/lo...d44193343.html

Yeah, going home to get a gun and then pursuing someone seems like it would be hard to justify.

That's going to make it hard to try to say he didn't know any better.

Looks like a self defense case to me.

Yeah. That is fair. I don't know whether pointing a gun at someone would constitute a lawful component of a citizen's arrest in Georgia. If it is, that seems like a real bad idea, especially in a world where there is surveillance everywhere and there is a reasonable chance the police could find the person down the line if it was warranted.

Also, I am not sure your interpretation of "stand your ground" laws is correct, but I really don't know.

It will be interesting to see if the original DA was really justified in not pursuing the case per Georgia law, or if he was breaking the law by covering up a very serious crime to help out a friend.

I worded that a little funny. What I meant is that Arbery would have been justified in defending himself against the three men under the "stand your ground" law.

It also, at least to me, wouldn't make sense that the McMichael's could use the "stand your ground" law as a defense when they are the ones who posed the threat in the first place, especially if it is considered aggravated assault in Georgia to approach a citizen's arrest at gunpoint and that they did not actually have "reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion". Running into their homes to get weapons could also be considered a form of premeditation.

I'm sure both sides will claim self-defense but it would be difficult to prove Aubrey was attempting to wrestle the shotgun away in order to shoot all three men, one with a pistol pointed directly at him. It seems more probable that Aubrey was simply trying to disarm the guy with the shotgun.

The video is pretty damning evidence, I suspect the son goes to prison for a very long time, the father gets 0-5 years, a bunch of people get fired, and the family get's a lot of money in a civil suit(not sure if a civil suit is possible here but there are clear signs of corruption due to the father being ex LEO).

I don't get why they were chasing him. I have not heard anything about the guy committing a crime. If there is no evidence a crime was committed by Arbery, in conjunction with no evidence indicating the chasers were aware of this crime, it's murder. They assaulted the guy, and that's a felony, and someone died during that assault, which makes it murder under GA law, and both chasers are culpable.

This is what promotes it to a felony:

and this is what promotes it to murder:

American media doesn't do a very good job of filling in the details. If you check DailyMail there is a lot more information of what really happened, including the police report.

Why the American media does such a bad job of presenting known information is of course because they are only interested in pushing a narrative, and not interested in actually telling the full story. But that is a matter for a different thread.

Anyways, the men chasing Arbery actually called the police while they were chasing him. Apparently, in their minds he was a burglary/trespassing suspect and in their minds that justified them chasing him and even trying to hold him at gunpoint.

This seems absurd at face value, and yet it seems the first DA actually agreed with this reasoning, so I was definitely interested in seeing if there is actually a justification in Georgia law that would make their actions justifiable.

What's in their mind is irrelevant. If they don't have evidence he committed a crime, it does not matter what they think. You can't assault someone because you think they committed a crime. They would have to have witnessed this guy committing a crime to get by with that defense.

I'm not 100% clear on the facts or Georgia law, but if the McMichaels did not have an objectionably reasonable basis to believe Arbery committed a crime, then I can pretty much guarantee that Georgia law did not permit them to chase after him with guns. No state has a law that crazy.

Did you read the police report? Lets say what they are claimed on the police report is completely truthful, and they did witness him burglarizing the vacant lot next door, and had evidence he had previously burglarized the lot. That still seems like GA would have to have some real wacky laws to legally justify their behavior.

And yet a DA already waved the case. So given this, either there is some serious malfeasance going on in the DAs office or Georgia really does have such laws.

I just wish our media took the job of journalism a little more seriously and was less manipulative, so we could get the real story. The fact I had to go to DailyMail to find the details I did says a lot about our media IMO.

You could just read the New York Times.

So you are ok giving the US online/Cable TV MSM a pass for continual shoddy journalism of US events that is consistently surpassed by an online British tabloid?

It’s puzzling that you don’t think the Daily Mail is a part of the media.

It turns out that Arbery is no angel

Wow, no wonder he got his ass beat.