Ahmaud Arbery and the Shadow of Justice
On February 23, 2020, Greg McMichael, Travis McMichael, and Roddie Bryan, all white men, pursued Ahmaud Arbery, a black man, running in a suburban neighborhood. Later reasoning they believed him to be a burglar, they followed Ahmaud in a truck until Travis McMichael confronted Ahmaud while holding a shotgun, pursued him further, then fired a weapon three times. Travis McMichael shot Ahmaud Arbery twice at point-blank range, killing him.
Instead of investigating, Jackie Johnson, Brunswick district attorney, directed law enforcement not to arrest anyone involved and recused herself from the case citing a connection to Greg McMichael. Having discussed the case with George E. Barnhill, Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney, Johnson then recommended the Georgia Attorney General’s office to give him the case without disclosing her and Barnhill’s previous discussion. Barnhill then argued that there was not sufficient probable cause to arrest Ahmaud Arbery’s pursuers and recused himself from the case as well also due to a connection to Greg McMichael.
Ahmaud Arbery’s death would have gone uninvestigated a video of the pursuit and attack had not been leaked to the public.
On May 5, a video of the attack was released on a local radio station website. The video went viral at once, catalyzing questions about why there had not been an investigation, charges, or arrests. Arrests quickly followed the national outcry. Charges were laid and a trial date set. On November 24, 2021, Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael, and William (Roddie) Bryan were all found guilty of murder among other various charges.
All three men await sentencing where the prosecutors will be pursuing a sentence of life without parole. A federal trial is due to begin next year, trying them on charges of hate crimes and attempted kidnapping.1
From the moment the video released, the overwhelming view of the McMichael’s attack assumed that it was racially motived. The public also viewed the trial as a matter of racial justice; the relief mixed with renewed anger and grief was evident throughout public response upon the guilty verdict.
I am a theologian and clergyperson concerned for how the Christian community embodies the presence of Christ’s justice, peace, and love in our society. While Ahmaud Arbery was eventually represented in court, the way of Christ is not always, or perhaps even sometimes, reflected in court arguments, verdicts, or sentences particularly when it comes to the crimes committed by or against the Black community.
What I am not is law enforcement, a lawyer, a judge. I am not here to argue the contents of secular law, the legalities of the case, the judgement, the verdict. I am writing for Christians – how we participate in the presence of Christ here and now by advocating for the shadow of justice that can only be fully realized in Christ. We find this way in communion with our Christ, our community, our faith, and our Scriptures.
The Bible’s stance on killing is clear, “You shall not murder.” However, the Bible is never actually clear on anything. The lack of clarity here is due to human complexity. There are varying degrees of being the cause of someone else’s death, whether accidental, negligence, premediated, passionate, self-defense, etc.
We live in a wildly violent world in which the harms committed against one another are not so easily parsed, therefore the way for justice is not so easily made. The range between purely accidental manslaughter and premeditated murder is vast.
The Torah attempted to meet the range of violence between these two extremes of the spectrum. Deuteronomy 6-26 is a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments further expositing their application in a muddy society. Deuteronomy 19 is the sermon on the don’t-kill-people commandment. The pursuit of peace and justice comes in the form of cities of refuge. These are six cities spread throughout the land of Israel divided by districts accessible to anyone in that district. These cities have two purposes.
1) The first is the pursuit of peace and protection.
The manslayer can flee to the city for protection in the case of an avenger seeking to exact revenge. The city will both protect manslayer from murder and prevent the potential avenger from committing murder in the heat of rage and grief, forfeiting their own life to trial.
2) The second is the pursuit justice.
The city will hold a trial to determine whether the death was intentional or accidental. Numbers 35 differentiates manslayer from murderer with one phrase – enmity.2 The trial in the city of refuge seeks to discover any particular attitude of anger, resentment, hate from the manslayer toward the person killed. This is the evidence of murder.
This is the foundation for Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount declaration that those with anger, hate, resentment in their hearts have committed murder even without taking a life. This heart state is exemplified in Cain, the first recorded murderer. When God saw Cain’s enmity toward his brother, they warn Cain that sin was lurking at the door ready to devour. When Cain handed himself over to evil, he became the sin lurking to devour the innocent. He rose up, consuming his brother, and polluting the ground with blood.
Justice is a wrongdoing made right, the wrongdoer somehow forfeiting or returning what they gained. When Zacchaeus repented of his theft, he gave half his wealth to the poor then restored his stolen wealth four times over to his victims.3 What stolen can be returned or at least restituted. However, human life is valued above all else because we are made in God’s image. Humans are eternal, formed by God’s own hands and will.
When a human is defiled or killed, there is no making right this wrong. Their future is altered or taken, their community marred or entirely robbed. The harm is multiplied a hundred times. Murder, even assault or abuse, is a graver offense than our forms of justice can answer. There is no payment you can make to atone for taking another person’s life.
According to the Torah, when a person is found guilty of accidental slaughter, they must remain in the city until the death of the high priest, after which they may return home. When a person is found guilty of murder, justice is enacted without pity.4 In one form or another, the one who took a life must now forfeit their own whether by exile or execution. However, the forfeit cannot satisfy the loss. What was taken is still gone, was is dead is still decaying.
What must not be lost to the Christian community is that taking a life is a profound evil that ought first to be accompanied by profound grief. Remarks about what should have or could have been (i.e. “if they have complied”) are not the way to stand in solidarity with the grieving.
Next, the taking of a life, like any wrongdoing, requires the pursuit of justice as shadowy as it may be. In that same thread, the one who has taken a life whether accidental or intentional carries the weight of the thousand of futures and relationship cut off with a final breath.
The McMichaels and Bryan cannot make their wrong right. They armed themselves then pursued, pursued, pursued Ahmaud Arbery until he was dead. They cannot undo malicious actions; they cannot return what they took. Those responsible to pursue justice actively denied Ahmaud, his family, and his community. In some form or another, Travis and Greg McMichael, Roddie Bryan, and Jackie Johnson will all forfeit their own lives for the crimes committed again Arbery.
We recognize the enmity present in their actions and inaction as well hateful patterns in our society - that if Arbery were white he most likely would not have been falsely accused of crimes nor have been the victim of a vigilante pursuit. If he were white, it is unlikely the district attorney would have rejected conducting an investigation or pressing charges. Instead, he and others are arbitrarily deemed not human enough to warrant justice.
If I am not bringing us to a satisfying conclusion, it is because there is not one. We hold the tension that there must be justice yet that justice is not complete or oftentimes not present at all. We name where it was denied, we stand in solidarity with the grieving while mourning ourselves. In this broken world, only the shadow of justice is in our reach. Just because Christ has not yet fully realized justice, it does not mean we do not pursue it now.
Until this point I gathered my information from multiple news sources citing the information corroborated in multiple sources.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/us/ahmaud-arbery-video-lawyer.html
https://www.nytimes.com/article/ahmaud-arbery-shooting-georgia.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52623151
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/24/1058240388/ahmaud-arbery-murder-trial-verdict-travis-greg-mcmichael
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/05/us/jackie-johnson-brunswick-da-charges-arbery/index.html
Numbers 35 is a far more detailed exposition on the cities of refuge if you want to read more.
Luke 19:8
Deut. 19:13; Numbers 35:30-31. Note that this statement is not any advocation for the death penalty. There are huge gaps in the context of the Hebrew Scripture here that does not translate to 2021 western Christianty. Namely, that Christians are not a national, but a spiritual reality and also that America is not a theocracy.