The possibility that three White men accused of chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery may be acquitted had Georgia residents tense and anxious when this week’s approval of a nearly all-White jury in the men’s trial became a reminder of why Black people mistrust the criminal justice system.
Scholars and law experts said the racial breakdown of the jury for the trial for Arbery’s killing is reminiscent of the Jim Crow era and quickly drew comparisons with the aftermath of Emmett Till’s death. “Here some 65 years later, we’ve advanced to the point of having potentially one Black juror who will sit on this jury,” said Daryl D. Jones, an attorney with the Transformative Justice Coalition, referring to the 1955 trial in which the two men arrested in Emmett’s slaying were acquitted by an all-White jury. When opening statements began Friday in the Georgia trial of the men accused of chasing down and killing Arbery last year, only one person of color is part of the jury hearing the case. A nearly all-White final panel of 12 jurors and four alternates was selected earlier this week despite accusations of intentional discrimination toward qualified Black jurors. The jury’s makeup has drawn criticism from Arbery’s family and put into focus the South’s history of racial exclusion in jury selection. Glynn County Superior Court Judge Timothy R. Walmsley approved the jury selection on Wednesday as he dismissed the prosecution’s efforts to reseat them. Prosecutors had raised what is called a “reverse Batson,” a challenge based on a 35-year-old Supreme Court decision that ruled it unconstitutional for potential jurors to be struck solely based on race or ethnicity. A traditional “Batson challenge” is usually brought up in criminal cases of Black defendants being tried before all-White juries when there’s a belief that prosecutors are excluding jurors based on race. The “reverse Batson” follows the same principle but instead addresses the actions of defense attorneys. Paul Callan, a CNN legal analyst who is a former New York homicide prosecutor and a media law professor, said the only remedy would be for the judge to declare a mistrial and start the jury selection again in Glynn County or move the case to another county. But at this point, that remedy appears to be unlikely, Callan said.
