Ahmaud Arbery trial: Closing arguments spill into 2nd day with self-defense debate

The prosecution on Tuesday spent two hours hammering at defense attorneys' attempts to blame Ahmaud Arbery for his own death.

The three white men charged in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery had no right to claim self-defense because they were the ones who provoked a confrontation with the 25-year-old Black man while he was running in their neighborhood, a prosecutor told jurors in her final closing arguments Tuesday.

“You can’t claim self-defense if you are the unjustified aggressor,” Linda Dunikoski said. “Who started this? It wasn’t Ahmaud Arbery.”

The prosecution gets the final word because it carries the burden of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecutors and defense attorneys spent hours on Monday delivering closing arguments that spilled into a second day.

Dunikoski spent two hours Tuesday morning hammering at defense attorneys’ attempts to blame Arbery for his own death. The defense attorneys said Arbery lashed out violently with his fists to resist a lawful citizen’s arrest by the defendants.

Dunikoski said Arbery’s pursuers had “no badge, no uniform, no authority” and were “just some strange guys in a white pickup truck.” And she cited their own words to police immediately after the shooting: that they saw Arbery running but were unsure if he had committed a crime.

“You can’t make a citizen’s arrest because someone’s running down the street and you have no idea what they did wrong,” Dunikoski said.

Once the prosecution wrapped up, Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley began giving instructions to the disproportionately white jury on how to apply the law before it can start deliberations at the Glynn County courthouse in the port city of Brunswick.

Arbery’s killing became part of a larger national reckoning on racial injustice after a graphic video of his death leaked online two months later.