The video of Ahmaud Arbery’s shotgun death was a shocking piece of evidence that suddenly brought the Black man’s killing into the national consciousness.
But the murder convictions of the three white men who chased him may have been secured as much by their own words to investigators the day of the shooting.
Greg McMichael, who was in the bed of a pickup truck when his son killed Arbery, told police the Black man “was trapped like a rat” and he told Arbery: “Stop, or I’ll blow your f—ing head off!”
Statements like that allowed prosecutors to give context to the short video that didn’t show the entire shooting and had little of the five minutes that the men chased Arbery.
“It’s those statements that screwed the defense more than the video. If they had never talked to police and they said we saw him taking something from the property and running – there’s an OK shot the jury might have acquitted them,” said appellate attorney Andrew Fleischman, who followed the trial from Atlanta.