A Follow Up on the Tragic Ahmaud Arbery Situation

Reasoning Versus Emoting in the Arbery Case

Welcome to the conversations that matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I'm gonna do a quick episode today because I don't have a lot of time. But I've had a few people reach out to me wanting me to do a follow-up to the video I put out about Ahmaud Arbery and the Michaels and I've had some strong reaction online.

From some most of it has been overwhelmingly positive people saying I never knew some of the things that you're bringing out and really all I was doing was Watching the videos that were available and reading the police reports and the DA reports and etc.

So it's not anything that you can't find, but I'll be honest I had to go to DuckDuckGo an alternative search engine to just find some things because the news reports most of them don't Have that information or the information I was looking for in them I just wanted the primary sources, which is probably a wise thing to do whenever you're researching.

But but but there's been a few reactions. So this is the positive reactions and then there's the reactions from the woke crowd, which I was anticipating one guy I don't even remember his name, but he Retweeted one of my tweets and he edited it.

He it was I was just going over some of the main points I had made in the video and then was an advertisement. To hey watch the video. Well, he cut that out nothing about a video and he put it out there and just said that I'm basically a racist and that I Think slavery is a good thing.

We should have never gotten rid of it, which of course that is wrong. But that's the way that critical race theory works. I mean this is People who think they can get in the McMichael's head and say oh, they're just racists.

I mean, they're from Georgia. They hunt. They're white and look this Situation ended in the death of my a minority this this whole thing so it must have been motivated by racism and so people thinking they can get in my head and Assume that I must be reading these facts all wrong just because I'm motivated by racism.

And and that there's an objective way to look at these things and hopefully we're all striving for that I don't have a corner on that market, but I believe it exists and we should all be looking for what?

What is the truth in this situation? So let me reiterate some things everyone. It's a horrible situation and you should feel some kind of compassion number one, but you should also feel some sense of I want some I want someone to pay for that.

That was wrong. That was avoidable and I get that that is completely understandable completely and and so. So I think that's the emotional reaction. I think many of us are just emoting based on that not all of us.

But that's the reaction that I'm I'm seeing a lot especially from the more woke crowd now. Even those who aren't woke those who don't think racism necessarily had to be involved in this. You think this could have just been a terrible situation?

I think there's still at least a segment of people in my camp. I would say who still look at this and think Wow, this is horrible. This is so avoidable. Their Justice needs to be done whether they were motivated by racism or not.

What they did was wrong, and I'm not their lawyer I'm not trying to get them off. I I'm actually glad it's going to trial because. Especially with the public pressure. These things need to be established.

My I'm concerned if if they do are found not guilty. There's a whole lot of people invested in wanting to see them hurt and I don't know I don't know how they'll react we we saw we've seen in other cases.

How people have reacted who are of that mindset and and so I hope real justice though is served in this case. So so I don't know all the facts. All I have is what's available to me and all I have is my mind and my interpretation and that's why you're tuning into this Video.

I'm assuming you're not getting anyone else perspective. You're getting mine. So I'm gonna address a few of these things. The the woke stuff we've already dealt with but those who I would say are in my own camp, you know.

They're not they're against social justice, but they have questions. I Want to address your questions a few of them. I may not get to all of them and there may be some things left hanging at the end. I don't know, but hopefully I'll at least address some of them.

So they fall into two categories biblical law and the laws of the state of Georgia, which I think are that's very fair that's what we should be talking about and I tried to bring some of that to bear in the last video now that this debate is not where I thought it would be.

And I'm gonna claim that as a victory. I'm glad that a lot of the people that have reached out to me and asked me questions are not asking about racism. Which is great because we don't know that and I'll say if they are found Guilty of some kind of hatred and that was what motivated them that you know There's a premeditation there then I'm assuming there's a there's a punishment for that and they should be punished there.

There should be Some some kind of justice for that but but the thing is We don't know any of that and there's no there's no biblical category for hate crime. There is for premeditation. So let me just be clear on that.

I'm not saying that this would be more severe if it was racism. I'm saying if there's premeditation of any kind if they didn't like his shorts and they went after him, you know that was the reason that's wrong, but but but other than that, you know other than The the whole motive angle of this the the only really working Principle that we can we we can discuss is was there reasonable suspicion was there?

Really was there probable cause for them to try to stop him and I went over this in the last video somewhat but some people have some more questions and so I think I assumed that everyone had sort of the same working definition of probable cause and I'm realizing that's not the case.

I'm a law school dropout. I didn't finish I dropped out the first semester. But you learned about probable cause pretty early. And so I'm gonna go over a bunch of this stuff and just hopefully it makes things a little more clear now I gotta say one more thing before I start.

This is a follow-up to another video. So you're not gonna get my full thoughts on this case if you haven't watched that other video and it is over an hour. So if you haven't watched it, I'd encourage you stop stop watching this go watch that watch it on double speed.

Listen to it on double speed and then come back to this because one thing I've noticed is some people like to take little thing I said here a little thing I said there and Then run with it and there's there's a whole lot more going on.

If you want to fairly represent what I'm trying to say, that's the way to do it so all that said these are important issues because they do have to do with biblical justice and Let's start off with the Bible on that note.

Exodus 22 and the Difference Between Night and Day Theft

Let's go to Exodus Chapter 22 and I was asked about this John. Why didn't you talk about Exodus 22? Verse 2 says if a thief is caught while breaking in and is struck so that he dies there will be no blood guiltiness on His account, but if the Sun has risen on him, there will be blood guiltiness on his account.

He shall surely make restitution if he owes nothing then he shall be sold for his theft. Which by the way that that's slavery selling him into slavery. I'm not making it up. The Bible says this. So why didn't you bring that up?

Well, first of all, I did bring that up. I quoted verse 2 I did not quote verse 3 and it's because I did not assume that the McMichaels Went after him just because they were gonna execute him for stealing that would have been wrong.

And let me make that very clear that's very wrong if they if they had the motive of we're just gonna execute him because we think he stole something that's that's evil, but That's not what happened that's not what we that the evidence that we have including the video evidence doesn't say that's what happened.

That's not what? Ultimately Killed Ahmaud Arbery. It wasn't them with the intent of we're gonna execute you for for stealing. So So that's one of the reasons I didn't bring this up now I do want to make a few comments about this verse if I can go find it again here.

Now if you if you look at it verse 3 if the Sun has risen on him There will be no blood guiltiness on his account. So this is in the wisdom of God. He's saying hey at night. This this is self-defense.

This is if someone comes at you and you're gonna defend yourself. You don't know what their intent is, but they die and you strike them. You know, you don't know if they're threatening you. But if if the Sun has risen you can see what they're doing you walk into the room.

You see them trying to steal something. Then and then you kill them that would be wrong because why because they're supposed to make restitution and so so this is a system wherein they would be sold into slavery or they would have to pay back whatever it was that they owed if they didn't Have anything to pay back their slave.

Now, how would you detain that person if they ran? That's a an honest question that I think needs to be answered. Even I'm saying back then in Old Testament times if you see that and they run now, do you can you call the police?

No, you can't you're the only one That saw it. You're the only one that can do something about it. You'd have to figure out a way to get them in that relationship where they're paying you back. Otherwise.

Other otherwise there's there's really nothing you can do and and for those who want to take I think there's an over simplicity here to want to take the Old Testament system and just Kind of drop it into 21st century United States.

It doesn't work. I look at the general equity. I look at the The principles and try to apply them, but you can't take that whole entire system and just drop it here. We have a prison system, which is wrong.

I don't think it's biblical, but you can't just get rid of that right away. I I think we should have politicians who are striving to have a more of a system of restitution and not prison. That's that's just but that would have to be progressive.

You'd have to do that gradually. If you were going to implement that where you'd have a huge problem if you just opened all the doors to the prisons. I mean you'd have to have a plan in place and and that's just not the system that we live in.

And so yeah, is it broken in some ways? It is broken in some ways, but but that's all we have and so we have to do our best with what we have. Okay, and that's the practical side of this. It's not ideal and really no human institution will ever be ideal.

God, of course gave us a model and it was supposed to be a light to the nation. So I do think that we should be striving to apply these principles and I think God has the ideal Mindset he has the ideal principles.

But once humans get involved it's no longer ideal and we don't have an ideal system certainly in this country in every way an ideal justice system is what I'm talking about and so. So so we can't just you know assume all the things that would have been assumed in this situation.

If someone did break in and you saw them or you saw them running out of your house or you know. Let's say you're gonna help the guy, you know help the guy whose house was broken in. There's nothing here that would prohibit that.

Because it'd actually be a just thing that guy has to the robber the person that you think is robbing. He has to pay back. He has to make restitution. So someone has to if he resists come in and make sure that that take place that takes place.

So that's Exodus 22 and I just don't think that principle, you know, like I said I'll say it one more time if it was a situation where they were gonna execute the guy. They're gonna shoot him for stealing that would be wrong.

But that's that's not what happened. All right. So here's another article and I think this captures a lot of the objections that people have to what I said in the last video. Some people the Ahmaud Arbery killing in Georgia law and this is by Andrew.

I think it's Fleishman if I'm pronouncing that, right? He's a lawyer I think in Georgia and here's the subtitle explaining the legal issues surrounding an incident of two white men. Shooting a black joggers that they suspected of crime and I went over the jogging thing in the last video.

So you can you can see that Fleishman's already biased in some ways. He's just assuming this is a jogger and. Of course, we can't assume that and you can watch my other video if you want to know why I said what I just said.

But but here's his argument. I'm gonna get a few arguments really here. He says the officers had probable cause to arrest so that hey the officer should have just arrested the McMichaels. And what does he base that on?

Well, he goes down here and he says there was a case Where there was a woman who had been raped and abused by her ex-husband for years called the police to escort him out and shot Him when he broke back in she was arrested on the spot and convicted.

Before she was let off in 2020. Now, you can click on this you can go you can read it. I encourage you to read the case history, but there's a few key differences between the two number one. Is there were two other witnesses with the McMichaels?

So you had three people that noticed this in this case. You only have the one only one person is there to establish what actually took place and and if you're thinking biblical justice. You got to be thinking two or three witnesses number two, and this is more important perhaps in the McMichael case, there's a there's a the aggressor is.

The is Arbery and he and you may say no the aggressor, you know, because they're intimidating. They're just they're out there with John Wayne. They're with their guns and and look I'll I'll say this before I get to that.

Don't get ahead of myself. I said it in the last episode. I think it was unwise for them to go after him after he evaded them once which made him look suspicious. They should have said, you know, we're gonna let the police just handle this.

I don't know whether it was because the older Arbery had been a police officer and was an investigator, you know I I don't know if that's the reason. That he kept going but but they should have probably let it let it go right there.

And but there's a lot of people right now saying oh they were they were like they were flashing their weapons. They were pointing them at Arbery. I'm not seeing the evidence for that. There's really three things and if you read the the police report you'll know some of this.

This is why I think the lawyer who wrote the piece I'm about to comment on it doesn't seem like he did a lot of Research digging into the actual facts of the case. But if you read the police report, they thought Arbery might be armed.

They had seen him in camera footage during the night, by the way, too. Not just during the day. But they had seen footage of him and it looked like he might have been armed in one of the clips they had seen.

They had a gun stolen from them. That seemed to corroborate with with all of this and they also if the older McMichael at least had. He had actually investigated Arbery for breaking his parole violating his parole for a gun charge.

There's three good reasons why they would want to take guns with them if they were gonna try to stop him for the sake of Defense not to go kill him. But because we don't know if he has a gun and we're just gonna keep them on our bodies.

And I don't have I don't see any evidence that they ever Tried to point the gun at Arbery and say you need to slow down because we're you know. We'll shoot you or threatening them with the gun. It just they just had them on them in case and.

And in there and I don't even know if Arbery even saw the gun until they had stopped and the one guy was carrying a Shotgun not pointing at Arbery. Is that intimidating? Yeah, that's intimidating but if you know all the events that led up to that it makes it a little more understandable why they would have Suspected that Arbery might have a firearm or at least they would have wanted would have wanted to be prepared and you can understand why.

They would wanted to stop him doesn't make it wise. Okay, that doesn't make it wise but it also doesn't make it illegal and those can be two different things. And and so we need to separate those two.

I know it's hard in this situation. I get that but we need to separate those two. So let's keep going with this article here. So the so in this case you had You didn't have the struggle for the firearm that existed in the Arbery case in fact, she says she felt like he was going to kill her that night and so she She shot him.

She just grabbed a gun and she that she kept her under the sofa and fatally shot him and. So so in the it's not in the accidental category. It's not it's not in the tragedy. There was a premeditation of I'm gonna kill him because he's threatening me and there were no witnesses in This case in the Arbery case you had witnesses and there was this the aggressor.

Technically speaking under the law you may not like it was Arbery. And so then it became as soon as Arbery punched him and went for the gun. It became a self-defense situation. And it was catalogued.

So that's a key difference and I think it's worth noting. And the second point that this particular lawyer makes is he says well It's not really burglary under Georgia law because for it to be burglary there needs to be suspicious intent.

He says the person's behavior had to be otherwise suspicious. So like a window getting broken in or he entered late at night, which by the way, they did have footage of that I don't know if this lawyers aware here we have Arbery entering without authorization, but no apparent evidence of unlawful intent and.

So so his intent has to be unlawful. He just all he did was enter without authorization. And so this is where I have to Wonder here if this lawyer has actually if he read just the police report and started doing research.

He would have found very easily. That there was a history here in the neighborhood. In fact, I'm going to show you this this is from Doo-doo-doo-doo Vox I just Posted this. So this is Larry English the guy who's building a home since the the construction house.

He said that someone had stoled $2 ,500 in fishing gear from him earlier this year. Remember I showed you the map. This is right on a lake there. You know, I said, there's no reason he's not taking a shortcut by going into that house.

So it's not a lake. It's actually an inlet. So $2 ,500 of fishing gear was stolen earlier that year. He never reported the theft. He told the Daily Beast the second was reported to police by Travis McMichael who said a 9-millimeter pistol was stolen on January 1st from a vehicle parked outside his home.

In the police report filed after Arbery's killing Gregor McMichael said the burglars had been caught on surveillance video and that Arbery matched the description of the suspect. And so this is this is kind of like key information here.

Now there may be more questions about that. I don't have time to get into to more. I mean and part of the reason is because I mean my knowledge is also limited. I don't know what other things have been.

What other pieces of evidence exist out there. But I do know it seems like of some evidence that it seems like this lawyer doesn't know about now. Here's here's his next point that he wants to make this was not a lawful citizens arrest and the reason he says that was because Citizens are entitled to use reasonable force to arrest the person who have committed crimes in their presence or immediate knowledge so he's saying this wasn't reasonable force being used and so here's The example he gives you can't burn down an orphanage to catch one child snatching extra bulls bowls of gruel talk about a Going to the extremes to try to prove your point.

So in a citizens arrest. You can't what he's saying is you can't take a gun to that if a guy doesn't have a gun you can't. And I don't know if that's true or not. Let me let me let me let me just say this though about this.

This is actually pretty simple to me. I don't even have to know everything about that particular law. Would you want to live in a world where like a young woman can't conduct a citizens arrest against let's say a Beefy guy who could really beat her up because if she brings a gun to that it's mismatched.

She's got more power she can kill him. She is lethal force on her side and and he doesn't have that kind of power. There's a reason that I think we wouldn't want to take this principle and then apply it across the board and It's it's because of situations like that.

You know, what if he did have a gun? What if someone made every indication they were bluffing? But they had a gun people have even gone to stores and try to rob them with toy guns. And if you try to do a citizens arrest and you think it was a real gun you're under that impression.

You're not allowed to do it. If you find out it was a toy gun and they got so so that's part of the problem here the McMichaels had good reason to think that Arbery might may have a weapon and So are they just gonna cast that to the wind?

Hopefully not and I don't think any of us would want to live in a world where that was the case so. That's what I have to say about that. So if whether or not you think that they used The reasonable force to try to conduct I guess what would you would consider a citizen's arrest?

That that's something that I guess will play out in court and it Putting yourself in the McMichael shoes knowing everything, you know. Let's say without going the extra mile of stopping him trying to stop him the second time, which I wouldn't have done but just the whole idea of Wanting to take a precaution seems to make sense to me.

And I don't think this the lawyer here has like a he his cases seems weak at best now I'm gonna deal with the probable cause thing here because this has been brought up a lot. He didn't have probable cause.

It wasn't in their immediate knowledge. Here's what probable cause is and I you know, this is just a Bing search, right? So you can look up any definition you want. It's all over the place. Here's the simple one reasonable grounds for making a search pressing a charge, etc.

The police have to meet this threshold all the time and sometimes you're not committing a crime. You're just suspicious and so go look up any definition of probable cause you want you can go to Wikipedia if you want and.

And you're gonna find out probable cause doesn't mean, you know for a fact. It just means that it looks like it's you can have a strong Suspicion. Here's another one. There's a legal dictionary down here.

Probable cause is a level of reasonable belief based on facts that can be Articulated that is required to sue a person in civil court to arrest and prosecute a person in criminal court. So that that's the threshold that they would have to meet which in this case seems actually like it would be pretty easy to meet that.

Now let's keep going with this particular attorney and his article here. He said justification won't be difficult to establish and the reason for that is I'm gonna just read it. Here's the thing about justification.

You cannot you typically cannot raise it if you are the aggressor or if you provoke the use of force. With the intent to use that force as an excuse. To use deadly force the other person must pose a deadly risk.

So so the big issue with the defendant's case here is that they pointed guns at Arbery. We know this because according to the one district attorneys memo the first shot went through Arbery's hand as he was trying to grab The barrel in Georgia pointing a gun at someone's aggravated assault, even if you had no intent to intimidate them.

So he's basing this not on the video. He's basing this on where the first shot went and Saying well it had to have been pointed now. It was but what when was it pointed the sequencing here is important because Arbery comes out and starts punching him if you watch the Video first and then immediately he grabs the gun and it's a fight over the gun and in that struggle.

The gun is pointed at him and they're not even a hundred percent sure from what I understand from the district attorney's memo at least. Which is the one he's citing here who actually even had the trigger even got pulled now.

It probably was the McMichaels it's probably it probably wasn't Arbery who's pulling the trigger on himself, but it's hard to tell in a fight like that and. And and the attorney here who's writing this article just assumes the aggressors are the McMichaels.

They have to be. The Sequencing here. Like I said is very important who attacked first. He brushes all that to the side. He ignores it which which is problematic in my opinion. He says because the McMichaels pointed guns at the victim and the victim was aware of those guns.

They committed aggravated assaults and because the victim died in the course of that felony. It's a felony murder. There is also an argument for false imprisonment or aggravated battery as felony murder predicates.

Albeit weekly and for aggravated assault. He goes on he just complains about Georgia law and and I that's not really within the scope of the objections that I'm getting. So hopefully that helped at least a little bit.

Maybe there's more questions that are being raised in your mind, which is good. I think it's good to consider these things and think through these things, but I guess that the point of all this is It really is wiser to to stay within the limitations of the evidence that we actually have and not to try to read into Things what we want or what we would like to have happen and and not to impugn someone's motives.

I mean that I didn't get into it but in this article he tries to he tries to say is the police department's fault because They're biased essentially they have a really we don't know that we don't know.

Is it possible? Yeah, I suppose so and maybe that will come out in the trial. But when you start talking about things you don't have evidence for you get in sticky situations real quick. I hope that was helpful for some of you who still have questions and hey if you have Questions that you still have you can post them.

I probably won't get to them, but. But I appreciate you lending me your ear for this short video and hope it was helpful to you. God bless and by the way, there's some I keep saying there's big stuff.

There are some big things coming out soon I hope you pay attention to that. Keep your eyes on the channel. You won't want to miss them. So I'll talk to you later. Bye now.