Attorney likens Arbery rally to `public lynching’ of white defendants

Defense attorney Kevin Gough speaks during the trial of Greg McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, and a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan at the Glynn County Courthouse, Friday, Nov. 19, 2021, in Brunswick, Ga. The three are charged with the February 2020 slaying of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery.

Octavio Jones/Pool Photo via AP

The defense attorney who caused an outcry by saying Black pastors should be barred from the murder trial over Ahmaud Arbery’s death declared in court Friday that a courthouse rally supporting the slain Black man’s family was comparable to a “public lynching” of the three white defendants.

“This case has been infected by things that have nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of these defendants,” attorney Kevin Gough told the judge, arguing that civil rights activists are trying to influence the disproportionately white jury.

Gough renewed a request for a mistrial the day after the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III joined hundreds of pastors, most of them Black, praying and rallying at the steps of the Glynn County courthouse. The event was organized after Gough last week objected to Sharpton sitting in the back row of the courtroom with Arbery’s parents.