Attorneys For Gregory And Travis McMichael Request That Ahmaud Arbery Not Be Called A ‘Victim’ In Court

By Zack Linly

Recent motions filed by attor­neys for Gregory and Travis McMichael — the father and son accused of chas­ing down and fatal­ly shoot­ing Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, Ga., on February 23, 2020 — appear to have one agen­da in mind: Remove all indi­ca­tions of Arbery’s very human­i­ty. In the motions filed on Dec. 30 and 31, not only are the McMichaels’ attor­neys try­ing to ban pho­tos that show Arbery pic­tured with, well, any­one, includ­ing fam­i­ly and oth­er loved ones, but they don’t want Arbery referred to as a vic­tim — despite the fact that he so clear­ly was one.
CBS 46 reports that the defense attor­neys don’t want jurors to hear the word “vic­tim” attached to Arbery’s name because “due process requires min­i­mal injec­tion of error or prej­u­dice into these pro­ceed­ings,” accord­ing to the motion.

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. The lawyers who may or may not pos­sess souls also wrote that the “bur­den of the pros­e­cu­tion should not be alle­vi­at­ed, min­i­mized or dimin­ished with the use of loaded words which imply that the pros­e­cu­tion has met its bur­den of proof that the crimes alleged have actu­al­ly been committed.”

OK fine: So the lawyers don’t want the VICTIM to be called a VICTIM because the jury shouldn’t be remind­ed that a VICTIM was VICTIMized with­out proof of the VICTIMization of the obvi­ous VICTIM hav­ing been estab­lished. But the ridicu­lous motions go even fur­ther than that.

Read the full sto­ry here. https://​www​.the​root​.com/​a​t​t​o​r​n​e​y​s​-​f​o​r​-​g​r​e​g​o​r​y​-​a​n​d​-​t​r​a​v​i​s​-​m​c​m​i​c​h​a​e​l​-​r​e​q​u​e​s​t​-​t​h​a​t​-​1​8​4​5​9​8​4​491

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