ATLANTA (AP) – Gov. Brian Kemp plans to sign a repeal of Georgia’s Civil War-era citizen’s arrest law on Monday, a year after the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man pursued by white men who said they suspected him of a crime.
The state House and Senate passed House Bill 479 by overwhelming margins. Kemp and lawmakers made the bill one of their top priorities after Arbery’s killing.
The outcry over Arbery’s fatal shooting, which was recorded on video by one of the murder defendants, also pushed lawmakers to give Georgia new hate crimes law in 2020, more than 15 years after the state Supreme Court overturned an earlier law.
The law would end the right of people in Georgia to make an arrest if a crime is committed in the person’s presence “or within their immediate knowledge.” It still provides for self defense and allows business owners to detain suspected thieves.
Those who had long pushed for the repeal said the law was approved in 1863 to round up escaped slaves and was later used to justify the lynching of African Americans.