'No good deed goes unpunished': Accused Arbery killer can't keep quiet, so insert ridiculous defense

Lawyers for two of the three men accused of hunting down and murdering 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery are asking a judge to bar those in court from referring to Arbery as a "victim," CNN reported. Arbery, a Black man, was unarmed when former Georgia cop Gregory McMichael and his son Travis accused Arbery of breaking into a South Georgia home. The incident ended when Travis fatally shot Arbery on Feb. 23, 2020. He was doing little more than jogging, his family attorneys have said. Footage of the incident captured by William “Roddie” Bryan, a South Georgia resident who was also eventually charged in Arbery’s death, was turned over to police the same day of the incident, but it still took Glynn County authorities 74 days to arrest Gregory and Travis McMichael on May 7, 2020. 

Two different Georgia district attorney offices are being investigated for “possible prosecutorial misconduct” in the case, yet it’s the attorneys for the McMichaels who are claiming their clients could potentially be unfairly treated. "Due process requires minimal injection of error or prejudice into these proceedings. Use of terms such as 'victim' allows the focus to shift to the accused rather than remain on the proof of every element of the crimes charged," the attorneys wrote in a Dec. 30 motion CNN obtained.

Another motion the news network obtained asked the court to limit the “in life” photographs of Arbery to one at trial, to be sure he is pictured alone in that photo and “to require a nonrelated witness to identify the person depicted in the one photograph.”

Attorneys Franklin Hogue, Laura Hogue, Robert Rubin, and Jason Sheffield went on to rebrand their apparent attempt to dehumanize Arbery in court as a pursuit of impartiality. “If the Court finds that an in life photograph is relevant, (...) then the Court must balance the photograph offered into evidence against ‘the danger of unfair prejudice’ to determine whether such danger ‘substantially outweighs’ the probative value of the evidence,” they said. The motions were included in a package of legal asks Wednesday and Thursday attempting to do everything from restricting what trial attendees wear to forcing the court to prejudicially delve into the backgrounds of those involved in the deadly encounter.

Dubbing it a "motion to maintain the safety and decorum of the courtroom," attorneys tried to deem what spectators wear, in the cases that they contain phrases like “Black Lives Matter” or “I Can’t Breathe,” a matter of “safety.” The McMichaels’ legal team also tried to claim in the same motion that Arbery wasn’t targeted because he is a Black man. 

They reasoned it is improper to compare the Arbery case to that of Breonna Taylor, an emergency medical technician shot and killed in a drug raid targeting a man who was already in police custody, or that of George Floyd, who was killed when a white Minneapolis cop kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes. “While defendants in this case are white and Ahmaud Arbery was a Black man, the similarities between this and these other famous cases end there,” attorneys wrote in the motion.

Attorneys also claimed in the motion: "It is the right of those supporters to wear whatever clothing they choose, to hold up any sign they wish, and to chant whatever slogan they like outside the courtroom. That is the beauty of our First Amendment. But once inside the courthouse, the sanctity of the defendants' right to a fair and impartial trial trumps the First Amendment."

Apparently only considering the McMichaels worthy of impartiality, those same attorneys argued in other motions that the prosecution should turn over to the defense "Arbery's disciplinary, criminal, and mental health records," as well as his telephone records and social media accounts and exclude from evidence any recorded calls the McMichaels made from jail. In one of those calls, Gregory McMichael used the phrase ”no good deed goes unpunished” in reference to his attempt “to conduct a private person's arrest of Arbery in order to allow the police to investigate whether Arbery had been committing a string of burglaries and thefts in the Satilla Shores neighborhood over the previous several months,” the defense attorneys wrote in the motion. They pushed against what they called the state's "incriminating interpretation of this aphorism” that the “good deed” the senior McMichael referenced was killing Arbery.

“There may be other phone calls that the State may believe achieve similar evidentiary purpose intending to incriminate either or both of the McMichaels. This motion pertains to all of them,” the defense attorneys wrote.

RELATED: 2 Georgia prosecutors investigated for 'possible prosecutorial misconduct' in Ahmaud Arbery case

RELATED: 3 men accused of hunting down, killing Ahmaud Arbery are indicted on murder charges

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Source: Daily Kos