ATLANTA. After every day of jury duty in the hate crimes trial against the men who killed Ahmad Arbery, Marcus Ransome retired to his hotel room and prayed.
“Honestly, I just prayed for everyone,” Mr. Ransome said. “For the jury. For the Ahmad family. Even the accused.”
Mr. Ransome, Brigadier, was the only black person on the jury, and like Mr. Arbery, he grew up in modest circumstances in a Deep South community where he learned what it meant to be racially profiled. He suffered from frequent police arrests and ugly looks from restaurant waiters.
But Mr. Ransome’s mother insisted that he never judge people by the color of their skin. And the judge in the Arbery case insisted that the jury listen to the evidence with a sober mind and an open mind.
Mr. Ransome, 35, said that every day he was on jury duty, he tried to follow these principles, even when he heard evidence that the defendants considered blacks to be animals or savages, and even when he was forced to watch a video that showed Mr. Arbery bleeding on the pavement and choking when the three white defendants refused to offer him comfort or help.
That was not easy. Mr Ransome wept when the video was shown in court. He wept when federal prosecutors showed another video shared by one of the defendants with a friend of a black boy dancing.
He wept as the verdict was delivered, which the clerk read aloud: Guilty on all counts.
“Just seeing how much hatred they had not only for Ahmad, but also for other people of the black race,” Mr. Ransome said. “There was a lot to take in.”
On Monday evening, Mr. Ransome spoke publicly about the case for the first time in an interview with The New York Times, describing his opinion of the evidence and jury deliberations. Their sentencing last week brought a decisive end to a two-year drama in which Americans faced the murder of a black man, echoing a time in the South when extrajudicial terror and violence against African Americans was rampant and when perpetrators often got away. Justice.
A different fate awaits Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and their neighbor William Bryan, the white men who stalked Mr Arbery around their neighborhood in February 2020. In November, a state court found the men guilty of murder and sentenced them to life in prison. . Additional federal convictions for hate crimes and attempted kidnapping could mean every man gets an extra life sentence.
Shortly after the verdict was handed down, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland thanked the jury and spoke about the trial in the broader context of federal intervention in cases of violence and intimidation by white supremacists “who suggested they might be acting outside the law.”
But justice prevailed. Throughout the week-long trial, Mr. Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery Sr., closely observed Mr. Ransom, a man publicly known only as juror 150, in the jury box. Mr Arbery said he sees violence, indifference and racism hurting him.
“Ahmad was black, I was black, this juror was black,” Mr. Arbery said. “We move the world the same way in many ways. Since Ahmad was black and he is black, he probably knows that it could be him. He probably said to himself, “That could be me.”
Mr. Ransome grew up in Columbus, Georgia, about 250 miles from Brunswick, Georgia, where the trial took place. Mr. Arbery was killed near Brunswick in a suburb called Satilla Shores. According to him, in his youth, Mr. Ransom was a “dumbass” but never broke the law, and became serious with age. His mother’s Christian faith passed on to him and she pushed him to attend college.
After seeing how many of his friends got in trouble with the law, he became a juvenile probation officer, thinking it was the best way to make a difference.
“I really realized that not everyone is treated the same,” he said. Sometimes, he said, it was because of race. But sometimes it was a class issue.
In December, he received a summons from a jury instructing him to appear in Brunswick, three hours from his home. He arrived in federal court on Feb. 8, impeccably dressed in a blazer and tie, the uniform he would wear to court every day, and the tailor-made armor he regularly uses to fend off the racist assumptions that fueled the attack on Mr. J. Arbery. who, on the day of his death, was running down Satilla Shores in a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers.
“Many people judge you by your appearance before they even hear the words coming out of your mouth,” Mr. Ransome said. “I know that I am being judged primarily for being black. So let me level the playing field.”
In jury selection, he told the court that he was a social worker and that he knew very little about the Arbery case. In an interview, he said he was shocked by the details of the murder and the viral video of Travis McMichael pulling the trigger of his shotgun. But he did not delve deeply into the matter, because at that time he was dealing with the death of his grandmother.
Soon the jury was finalized, and Mr. Ransome found himself listening to an opening speech by Bobby Bernstein, a lawyer in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. She said the government would show that Travis McMichael called blacks “outlaws” and “subhuman savages,” that his father humiliated a civil rights leader, and that Mr. Bryan used racial slurs.
This was part of a stream of revelations that showed that male racism was deeply rooted. Mr Brian was outraged by the fact that his daughter fell in love with a black man. Travis McMichael has repeatedly wished violence on black people.
Mr. Ransome said it was not these revelations that hurt him. And they didn’t surprise him. According to him, when he was in his 20s, a white man had an argument with him at a gas station and called him the Black Monkey. “I have dealt with racism on many levels,” Mr. Ransome said. “Is it upset or pissed off? Not really, because I have experienced this throughout my life. I’m almost numb to it.”
What’s worse, he says, is that other details have surfaced: the indifference the men showed to Mr. Arbery after Travis McMichael shot him and he lay dying. Mr. MacMichael’s unsubstantiated assumption that Mr. Arbery stole a gun from his car. Attribution by his father of criminal acts to Mr. Arbery which he did not commit.
Mr. Ransome said he was particularly appalled by Mr. Bryan’s decision to help the MacMichaels pursue Mr. Arbery, although he knew nothing of what had triggered the persecution. All Mr. Brian, who filmed the meeting, knew was that a black man was being chased by two white men. Why did he assume there was a legitimate reason to go after Mr. Arbery? Why didn’t he come to the conclusion that Mr. Arbery needed to be rescued and not persecuted?
Assassination of Ahmad Arbery
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Filming. On February 23, 2020, Ahmad Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was shot to death after being chased by three white men while jogging outside his home on the outskirts of Brunswick, Georgia. Mr. Arbery’s murder was captured in a graphic video that was widely viewed by the public.
Victim. Mr. Arbery was a former high school football standout and avid runner. At the time of his death, he lived with his mother outside of a small coastal town in South Georgia.
Suspects. Three white men – Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and their neighbor William Bryan – were charged with the murder of Mr. Arbery. They told authorities that they suspected Mr. Arbery of a series of break-ins.
Mr. Ransome also said he was struck by the impassive expression on the faces of the three men who watched the trial, accompanied by their lawyers, and did not speak. Mr. Ransome spent a week looking for signs of remorse on their faces. He said he had never seen him.
For a week, the jury — three blacks, eight whites, and one Hispanic — ate lunch together every day. Their exchanges were cordial but superficial as they were ordered not to discuss the case until after the discussion period.
After the closing debate, the jury returned to the room, where they quickly and unanimously chose Mr. Ransome as foreman of the jury. “No one has really voiced why exactly,” he said. But he said he felt what they were thinking—that he was the only black man in the room, and that it made sense for him to lead them.
The discussions, he said, were cordial, business-like and undramatic. No one claimed that the men were innocent. No one contested the idea that, as the jurors’ instructions stated, the men harassed Mr Arbery “because of Mr Arbery’s race and color”.
They quickly reviewed the allegations, including the two gun charges against the McMichaels, and compiled lists of evidentiary details supporting each. They completed most of the work by the first evening of discussions and completed it the following morning.
After the clerk read out the verdict, the judge asked the jury if it was true and correct. Mr. Ransome felt well the tears in his eyes when he said yes to her. The murder of Mr. Arbery told a story about the country. But here, he thought, there was an alternative that was also the right one—the one that made him think “that we, as a nation, you know, are moving in the right direction.”
“Wrong is wrong and right is right,” he said. “Whatever it is, you have to have consequences. No one is above the law.”