Ahmaud Arbery

Ahmaud Arbery was a Black man who was chased and shot dead on February 23, 2020 in the Satilla Shores neighborhood of Brunswick, Georgia. No one was arrested for more than two months. The case became a national focus of debate about racial violence, citizen’s arrest law, and the role of video and social media in bringing public attention to a case that local authorities had not moved on.

The Killing and the Two Months Without Arrests

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s account is that Arbery was in the Satilla Shores neighborhood when Gregory and Travis McMichael confronted him with two firearms, and Travis McMichael shot and killed him. The Glynn County Police Department investigated at the time.

Georgia’s Attorney General later set out, in his own request for a federal investigation, what happened next in the prosecutor’s offices. The Waycross Circuit district attorney was appointed to the case on February 27, 2020 without disclosing that he had already reviewed evidence and advised the Glynn County police, and that he had given an initial opinion the day after the shooting. On April 2, 2020 he gave police a written opinion that no arrests should be made. On April 7 it emerged that his son, employed in the Brunswick district attorney’s office, had previously prosecuted Arbery in a case in which one of the defendants had served as an investigator; he asked to be replaced the same day. A third district attorney was appointed on April 13, and a fourth — Cobb Circuit District Attorney Joyette M. Holmes — on May 11.

Arrests

The GBI took over the investigation on May 6-7, 2020, after video of the killing circulated publicly. Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested on May 7, 2020 and charged with murder and aggravated assault. William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., 50, who had recorded the video, was arrested two weeks later, on May 21, 2020, and charged with felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

The Hashtag

The case circulated online under the hashtag #IRunWithMaud, under which people posted runs of 2.23 miles, for the date of the killing. Writing in the American University Law Review, Lolita Buckner Inniss placed the killing in what she called the “distinctly racialized, spatialized, and surveillance legacy of jogging,” and noted that it had, “like so many other such incidents, been captured with a hashtag.”

Trials and Sentences

All three men were convicted in a Georgia state trial of felony murder and other offences. The McMichaels were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and Bryan to life with the possibility of parole.

On February 22, 2022, after a two-week trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, a federal jury convicted all three of hate crimes — each on one count of using force and threats of force to interfere with Arbery’s right to use a public street because of his race — and of attempted kidnapping. Travis McMichael was also convicted of using, carrying, brandishing and discharging a shotgun in the course of the hate crime, and Gregory McMichael of using, carrying and brandishing a revolver. The Justice Department stated that the jury found race to be a but-for cause of the defendants’ actions. On August 8, 2022 the court sentenced Travis McMichael to life plus 10 years, Gregory McMichael to life plus seven years, and Bryan to 35 years.

Changes in Georgia Law

Georgia enacted a hate crimes law, HB 426, signed in June 2020; the governor’s statement on signing describes it as ensuring “justice is served for all Georgians” and does not mention Arbery. On May 10, 2021 the governor signed HB 479, overhauling the state’s citizen’s arrest statute, with members of Arbery’s family present. His statement tied the bill directly to the case: “After the tragic killing of Ahmaud Arbery, we knew that action was needed to ensure an antiquated, Civil-War era statute could not be used to justify rogue vigilantism in the Peach State.”

Digital Political Impact

• The case sat with local police and four successive prosecuting offices for over two months without an arrest; the arrests followed within days of the video reaching the public.
• The response took the form of a hashtag campaign, #IRunWithMaud, organised around a symbolic act — running 2.23 miles — rather than around an organisation.
• The killing was discussed through 2020 alongside those of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor amid national debate over policing and racial violence.

What Is Not Established Here

The earlier version of this page carried several claims the citation audit could not source and which have been removed: that the video was “leaked”, that the case was within hours among the most discussed topics on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, that the hashtag generated millions of posts, that named categories of public figure participated, that the state trial was broadcast live, and that Georgia was “one of the last states” to enact a hate crimes law. The number of social posts in particular is the kind of figure this project will not assert without a source that measured it.