“This was a modern day lynching…and justice has been served,” said Denver defense attorney Jeffrey Wolf during a recent interview on Law & Crime Network.
The three white men who maliciously followed and gunned down Arbery last year in Georgia have been found guilty. Father and son Greg McMichael and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William Bryan, all faced the same nine criminal counts: one count of malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, one count of false imprisonment and one count of criminal attempt to commit a felony.
As the news of Arbery’s death circulated across the country, many viewed the case as racially motivated, and the trial quickly became a test case for racial justice. It took more than two months for an arrest to be made, and local prosecutors are now under investigation for the handling of this case. It has been alleged that Gregory McMichael’s former status as a special investigator for the Brunswick Circuit District Attorney’s office may have prompted leniency by local police during the initial investigation.
“I think it’s really, really important to not get lost in the fact that the original prosecutors on this case…decided no charges for their friend Gregory McMichael, his friend and his son,” explained Wolf.
And when asked about the defense’s performance in the trial, Wolf didn’t mince words:
“The defense attorneys in this case were basically the villains in a John Grisham novel,” said Wolf. “They tried the case in a small county hoping to get a jury that would walk white men for killing a black man…it was blatant.”
Watch the entire video for more details and extended commentary from Jeff Wolf about the recent verdict in the Arbery case.
