{"id":12781,"date":"2021-11-26T06:48:27","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T14:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12781"},"modified":"2021-11-29T01:27:25","modified_gmt":"2021-11-29T09:27:25","slug":"how-a-prosecutor-addressed-a-mostly-white-jury-and-won-a-conviction-in-the-arbery-case-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12781","title":{"rendered":"“How a Prosecutor Addressed a Mostly White Jury and Won a Conviction in the Arbery Case”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By <\/span>Richard Fausset, Cover Story,\u00a0<\/span>Nov. 26, 2021<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Linda Dunikoski, a prosecutor brought in from the Atlanta area, struck a careful tone in a case that many saw as an obvious act of racial violence.<\/em><\/p>\n

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BRUNSWICK, Ga. \u2014 The lawyer was from out of town, a prosecutor who had spent the bulk of her career in a large, liberal city, and she had been brought in to try the biggest case of her career: the murder of a Black man on a sunny afternoon by three white men just outside a small city pinned to the South Georgia coastline.<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite the evidence of racism she had at her disposal, Linda Dunikoski, the prosecutor, stunned some legal observers by largely avoiding race during the trial, choosing instead to hew closely to the details of how the three men had chased the Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, through their neighborhood.<\/p>\n

The risks went beyond her career and a single trial. Failure to convict in a case that many saw as an obvious act of racial violence would reverberate well outside Glynn County, Ga. For some, it would be a referendum on a country that appeared to have made tentative steps last summer toward confronting racism, only to devolve into deeper divisions.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Ms. Dunikoski\u2019s strategy was vindicated when the jury found the three men guilty of murder and other charges after deliberating for roughly a day. The convicted men \u2014 Gregory McMichael, 65; his son Travis McMichael, 35; and their neighbor William Bryan, 52 \u2014 are now facing life sentences in prison. They are also facing trial in February on separate federal hate-crime charges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Kevin Gough, the lawyer who represented Mr. Bryan, credited Ms. Dunikoski with threading the most difficult of needles. She mentioned a racial motive just once during the three-week trial, in her closing argument: The men, she said, had attacked Mr. Arbery \u201cbecause he was a Black man running down the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe found a clever way of bringing the issue up that wouldn\u2019t be offensive to the right-leaning members of the jury,\u201d he said. \u201cI think you can see from the verdict that Dunikoski made the right call.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ms. Dunikoski cross-examining a defendant, Travis McMichael, during the trial.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Pool photo by Sean Rayford<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A number of legal experts, in the moment, thought Ms. Dunikoski\u2019s strategy to be a risky one. But many in Brunswick thought that she had proved savvy about what tone to strike in a Deep South community where, they said, race doesn\u2019t have to be referenced explicitly for everyone to understand the implications.<\/p>\n

Cedric King, a Black local businessman, said that the evidence against the defendants, particularly the video of Mr. Arbery\u2019s murder, had been strong enough to stand on its own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n