ATLANTA (AP) \u2014 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\u2026<\/b>
\nATLANTA (AP) \u2014 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. \u201cI\u2019m entirely not shocked at all by what everybody\u2019s been shocked about. It\u2019s just classic Kevin Gough,\u201d 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. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem to matter to him that it rubs people the wrong way, and it doesn\u2019t seem to bother him that judges get irritated,\u201d 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\u2019s family, held outside the courthouse the day before, to a \u201cpublic lynching\u201d of the three white defendants. \u201cThis is what a public lynching looks like in the 21st century,\u201d Gough told the judge in his latest of several requests for a mistrial, saying his client\u2019s right to a fair trial was being violated by a \u201cleft woke mob.\u201d Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley dismissed the mistrial motion with little discussion. Arbery\u2019s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, called Gough\u2019s latest comments \u201cridiculous.\u201d Gough, who represents William \u201cRoddie\u201d Bryan, has repeatedly argued that the presence of high-profile civil rights leaders and pastors could threaten his client\u2019s 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. Gough is no stranger to controversy and media attention. He was appointed to head the Brunswick Judicial Circuit public defender\u2019s office in 2012, overseeing five counties in southeast Georgia, but was fired nearly four years later. In a dismissal letter in April 2016, then-executive director of the Georgia Public Defender Council Bryan Tyson wrote that Gough\u2019s conduct and history of poor management decisions left Tyson no choice but to remove him. Among other things, Tyson wrote in the nine-page letter, Gough \u201cengaged in a media campaign designed either to secure your re-nomination, to discredit the district attorney, or both.\u201d In a television interview two weeks earlier, Gough had accused the local district attorney of holding cases hostage \u2014 wasting taxpayer money and violating his clients\u2019 rights to a speedy trial \u2014 in hopes that Gough wouldn\u2019t be reappointed and she could file cases once he was gone. The Brunswick NAACP had raised concerns about the district attorney\u2019s office and, the day after his firing, Gough threatened a hunger strike \u201cunless and until\u201d the issues were addressed. The Rev. Zack Lyde, who said he took complaints for the local NAACP at the time, strongly opposed Gough\u2019s firing and credited him with bringing in talented public defenders who were actually winning cases against the district attorney\u2019s office. \u201cThat was very exciting to me because I\u2019d seen\u2026 a tremendous number of poor people, and in particular Black folks, who were railroaded by the system,\u201d he said in a phone interview. Lyde said he believes Gough is a skilled defense attorney who does whatever is required to help clients, so he doesn\u2019t take issue with Gough\u2019s call to bar Black pastors from the courtroom. \u201cI assure you, if I had to get a criminal lawyer to defend me in Glynn County, Gough would be the man,\u201d he said. As the Rev. Jesse Jackson sat in the courtroom Monday, Gough told the judge that civil rights icons had no reason to be there. \u201cWith all due respect, I would suggest, whether intended or not, that inevitably a juror is going to be influenced by their presence in the courtroom,\u201d Gough said. In addition to objecting to the presence of Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who sat with Arbery\u2019s parents in the courtroom last week, Gough said the judge was violating the U.S. Constitution by holding court on Veterans Day and raised a host of other concerns, often repeating the same objections numerous times. Walmsley has calmly rejected most of Gough\u2019s objections, but he said he found some of the lawyer\u2019s comments while protesting the presence of Black pastors \u201creprehensible.\u201d The attorneys for the two McMichaels have, at times, distanced themselves from Gough. After Gough\u2019s initial request to have Black pastors excluded from the courtroom, Jason Sheffield, one of Travis McMichael\u2019s lawyers, called the comments \u201ctotally asinine, ridiculous.\u201d Page Pate, a longtime criminal defense attorney in Atlanta who opened an office in Brunswick several years ago, has been watching the trial closely. He said he doesn\u2019t see a good defense strategy in making motions that will undoubtedly be rejected and which will likely have the opposite effect of what Gough says he wants. Largely because of Gough\u2019s comments, Sharpton called for Black pastors to descend on Brunswick to demonstrate outside the courthouse Thursday. \u201cEither he\u2019s working on some strategy none of us can perceive or visualize yet or he\u2019s just wrong,\u201d Pate said. Pate doesn\u2019t know Gough personally but says he has a reputation as \u201can outlier\u201d and \u201ca strange bird.\u201d \u201cNo one says he\u2019s an incompetent lawyer. I don\u2019t hear that at all,\u201d Pate said in a phone interview. \u201cWhat I hear is he\u2019s just an odd character.\u201d Gough\u2019s eyebrow-raising statements as the prosecution\u2019s case unfolded were made largely outside the presence of the jury. Once he began to address the jurors directly, he calmly and methodically laid out his case. With a high-profile trial that\u2019s being watched by people all over the country, it would be easy to assume that Gough is performing for the cameras. But he\u2019s just being himself, Wolfe said. \u201cMost events I dealt with in Brunswick, I was the only reporter in the room and I don\u2019t think he knew I was there,\u201d Wolfe said. \u201cHe\u2019s a performer when he gets up in the courtroom.\u201d<\/p>\n