The three Georgia men charged in the shooting death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery pleaded not guilty Friday to a judge in a Glynn County court.
Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory McMichael, have been charged with murder and aggravated assault, while his neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, who recorded the murder and initially claimed he had done so because he was a good Samaritan, was charged with Serious felony. murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.
The McMichaels had their audiences first. Father and son, dressed in matching orange prison suits, sat at opposite ends of a long table as their attorneys appeared by video conference.
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Bryan, brought in separately, also pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Bryan has frustrated investigators by changing his story multiple times during the course of the investigation, giving different accounts of his role in Arbery’s death. However, he has maintained his innocence. His attorney Kevin Gough says he is having a “difficult time” behind bars and argued that his client should be released on bail due to coronavirus concerns, saying that “being in jail is difficult with the virus.”
“Roddie is fighting there,” he said. “He is not used to being in jail. He lost his house, his car, his job and everything, everything he has left in the world is stored. If he can go back, he can get his life back.”
Gough started the process by asking the judge to compel Lee Merritt, an attorney representing the Arbery family, to remove the “George Floyd” face mask, claiming that he was trying to make a political statement. Gough’s request was canceled.
“I am comfortable with the fact that I will be able to indict the defendant and hear the motions in court without being influenced by a face mask,” said Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley. “I don’t see the masks as political statements.”
Gough also filed a motion, requesting that District Attorney Joyette Holmes be removed from the case, questioning how she was chosen for the job.
“The attorney general cannot choose who the prosecutors are,” said Gough. “There is a statute that gives the attorney general to make that appointment. We don’t believe there are those circumstances.”
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Arbery, a black man, was hunted down, caught and killed by the McMichaels, armed white residents in a southern Georgia neighborhood near Brunswick, while Byran filmed him.
Initially, no one was charged with Arbery’s death. For more than 10 weeks after the February 23 shooting, the investigation was halted when the Glynn County Police Department largely looked the other way. Calls for justice intensified after a video recording of the appalling incident was leaked. Three previous district attorneys assigned to the case either actively did nothing to advance it or had conflicts of interest. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was called after the cell phone footage was leaked. Less than 48 hours later, the McMichaels were arrested.
The Glynn County Police Department has come under national scrutiny for its mishandling of the Arbery case.
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A deeper Fox News dive showed the police department has a poor-quality record that has been tarnished by scandals and corruption claims for years, including allegations that detectives tampered with evidence, frequently lied to prosecutors, and took retaliation against whistleblowers.
In fact, the charges against the Glynn County Police Department are so severe that the Georgia General Assembly at this last session considered letting voters decide whether to dissolve the Glynn County Police Department entirely.
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The fact that Arbery, an unarmed high school soccer player, was shot dead while jogging by white men with strong ties to local law enforcement and efforts to bring them to justice ignored, brought the case to light. the center of national attention and sparked outrage.
Arbery’s death along with the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor became the catalysts for weeks of protests and a racial trial across the United States.
