Citizen arrest law: Georgia

Ahmad Arbery, a 25-year-old man went for a jog one day in a late February afternoon. He never made it back home. Why? Because Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34 somehow decided that Arbery was a burglar. So they picked up their a.357 Magnum and a shotgun, loaded up their pick-up truck, and pursued Arbery to gun him down. The McMichael's were white, and Arbery was black.

As illegal as this may sound, a prosecutor cited a Civil War-era law in order to justify the killing; since 1863, the State of Georgia has allowed it’s citizens to arrest one another if they bear witness to a crime and if the police aren’t around to take any action. The law has caused it’s a fair share of outrage for decades in courts for it to be repealed, calling it “outdated relics of the Wild West”.

The origins of these laws date back to the 13th Century when King Edward I was in power. Pretty obviously, an organized system of police didn’t exist, and somehow letting citizens take the law into their own hands seemed like a good recipe for justice.“These laws were created in a different time. We are not in a time where we lack police responsiveness in this country”, says Dana Mulhauser, a former civil rights lawyer at the DoJ. By now one may presume that this law is unjust and is very capable of exploitation.

You may even support the idea of repealing it. Be that as it may, the law has its fair share of supporters. These advocates of injustice cite instances such as muggings and shoplifting when a common citizen out of their good nature steps in and neutralizes the situation.

Prosecutor George E. Barnhill based his defense for the McMichaels around this law and said that the duo shouldn’t be held accountable. He further went on to claim that they had “solid first-hand probable cause” to believe Arbery was a suspect. There was no evidence that Arbery did commit the burglary, neither was he armed when he was chased down.

Nuances of this law differ from state to state, and a Statute in Georgia states that a person may arrest someone if the crime is committed within their “immediate knowledge”. The McMichaels couldn’t produce any evidence in light of this statute and were arrested on May 7, 2020, almost 3 months after the murder.

Written by: Akshith Sainarayan