The Patriot Post® · The Arbery Trial: The System Worked

Last Wednesday was an awful day for The Race Industry. A devastating day. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. You could practically feel BLM’s disappointment. You could practically see the color drain out of Al Sharpton’s Charlatan’s face.

Why? Because the “systemically racist” system wasn’t so systemically racist after all. In fact, it worked.

Early Wednesday afternoon, in the Glynn County Courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia, three white men were convicted of felony murder for the February 2020 killing of a 25-year-old black man, Ahmaud Arbery. All three — Travis McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael, and William Bryan Jr. — were also convicted of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and attempt to commit a felony. In addition, the jury convicted Travis McMichael, who fatally shot Arbery during a struggle for control of his shotgun, of malice murder, which indicates a killing “where no considerable provocation appears and where all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.”

“It’s been a long fight. It’s been a hard fight. But God is good,” said Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, outside the courthouse after the verdicts. “I never thought this day would come, but God is good.”

Arbery was no choir boy. He’d been sentenced to five years of probation for carrying a gun onto the high school campus in 2013, a year after his graduation, and his conviction for shoplifting from a Walmart store in 2017 extended his probation up until the time of his death. None of this, though, excuses the actions taken by his killers. Said Georgia Governor Brian Kemp: “Ahmaud Arbery was the victim of a vigilantism that has no place in Georgia. As legal efforts continue to hold accountable all who may be responsible, we hope the Arbery family, the Brunswick community, our state, and those around the nation who have been following his case can now move forward down a path of healing and reconciliation.”

Just as with a high-profile case decided days earlier in Kenosha, Wisconsin, video evidence proved crucial to the Arbery case. But whereas that evidence backfired against the state in the Kyle Rittenhouse case by revealing truths that the prosecution and the mainstream media had suppressed or outright lied about, the video in the Arbery case showed the victim being stalked, then confronted, then charging Travis McMichael and struggling for control of his gun.

McMichael said he feared for his life and fired the weapon three times while fighting with Arbery. One of those shots was fatal. The jury didn’t buy the self-defense claim, nor the claim of the three defendants that they were entitled to make a citizen’s arrest of Arbery because they believed him to be responsible for a series of burglaries in the neighborhood.

The resounding verdict, which was rendered by a jury of 11 whites and one black, makes it extremely difficult for the race-baiters on the Left to cry about “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” Race, in fact, hardly came up at all in the trial, and the comments of Ahmaud Arbery’s father seemed to reflect this: “All lives matter, not just black children,” he said outside the courthouse. “We don’t want to see nobody go through this. … It’s all our problem. So hey, let’s keep fighting. Let’s keep doing it and making this place a better place for all human beings — all human beings. Everybody. Love everybody. All human beings need to be treated equally.”

And yet the father’s call for colorblindness couldn’t keep the likes of Joe Biden from demagoguing the case and trying to inflame racial tensions. Here’s his post-verdict statement:

Ahmaud Arbery’s killing — witnessed by the world on video — is a devastating reminder of how far we have to go in the fight for racial justice in this country. Mr. Arbery should be here today, celebrating the holidays with his mother, Wanda Cooper Jones, and his father, Marcus Arbery. Nothing can bring Mr. Arbery back to his family and to his community, but the verdict ensures that those who committed this horrible crime will be punished.

While the guilty verdicts reflect our justice system doing its job, that alone is not enough. Instead, we must recommit ourselves to building a future of unity and shared strength, where no one fears violence because of the color of their skin. My administration will continue to do the hard work to ensure that equal justice under law is not just a phrase emblazoned in stone above the Supreme Court, but a reality for all Americans.

There he goes again, spouting that ridiculous “unity” garbage while at the same time trying to pit one race against another. Justice was served, Mr. President. Do us all a favor and put a sock in it.