ATLANTA (AP) — When a defense attorney in the trial of three men charged in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery called for Black pastors to be barred from the courtroom, shock and outrage rippled ac…
ATLANTA (AP) — When a defense attorney in the trial of three men charged in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery called for Black pastors to be barred from the courtroom, shock and outrage rippled across the country. But for people familiar with his courtroom style, it came as no surprise. A former top public defender whose firing five years ago was condemned by the local NAACP chapter, Kevin Gough is known in legal circles for pushing the envelope if he thinks it will benefit his client. “I’m entirely not shocked at all by what everybody’s been shocked about. It’s just classic Kevin Gough,” said Wes Wolfe, who covered Gough as a courts reporter for The Brunswick News from 2016 to 2020. Gough is not above creating a spectacle, Wolfe said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It doesn’t seem to matter to him that it rubs people the wrong way, and it doesn’t seem to bother him that judges get irritated,” Wolfe said. Gough did not respond to an email and a text message seeking comment. But he did deliver additional inflammatory remarks in court on Friday as he compared a rally of Black pastors in support of Arbery’s family, held outside the courthouse the day before, to a “public lynching” of the three white defendants. “This is what a public lynching looks like in the 21st century,” Gough told the judge in his latest of several requests for a mistrial, saying his client’s right to a fair trial was being violated by a “left woke mob.” Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley dismissed the mistrial motion with little discussion. Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, called Gough’s latest comments “ridiculous.” Gough, who represents William “Roddie” Bryan, has repeatedly argued that the presence of high-profile civil rights leaders and pastors could threaten his client’s right to a fair trial. Bryan, along with father and son Greg and Travis McMichael, is charged with murder and other crimes in the February 2020 shooting death of the 25-year-old Black man near the Georgia port city of Brunswick.
