Fox News Contributor Pans ‘Offensive’ Defense Attorneys in Arbery Trial, Praises Jury For Seeing Through ‘Race Thing’

Fox News contributor and former defense attorney Ted Williams said on Wednesday that the convictions in the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial happened amid a defense for which he felt “very, very embarrassed,” and that the jury reached its verdict “irrespective” of the efforts by the defense to exploit racial stereotypes.

Arbery, a Black man, was shot and killed in a Georgia neighborhood last year by three White people – Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan – who were all convicted Wednesday on felony murder and other charges in connection with his death.

Appearing on America Reports moments after the verdict, Williams slammed the defense lawyers:

What we saw in this case and one of the issues that we in this society are very sensitive about is the issue of race. And race was front and center in this case because the prosecution’s position was that this was a young Black kid that was out jogging and had not done anything that would permit even for a citizen’s arrest. The defense in this case, their position was that the jury should draw an inference, because he had been in this one house on several occasions and had been seen on videotape, that that in and of itself was enough for them to make a citizen’s arrest.

But I’d like to say something here. I am a lawyer and I can tell you I am very, very embarrassed by the manner in which several defense attorneys put on their case and it may very well have hurt them and their clients with the jury. When you give a closing argument and you talk about a dead man dirty long, black toenails, that in and of itself is very offensive. When you stand up and you tell a judge that there are Black pastors in the room and that you don’t want them there, that also was very offensive.

And I think, I think sadly that jurors are at some stage wearing their closing argument, may have picked up on some of this and it may very well have been very injurious to their clients.

Williams remarked that Arbery did not commit a crime.

I’ve got to tell you: Just jogging. And all we had was a Black kid jogging in the neighborhood. He hadn’t committed any crime. By the way, I was thinking they kept saying that they believed that he had committed some burglaries. But this kid was jogging. He didn’t have a car. He didn’t have a knapsack. He didn’t have anything on him to show that he could’ve taken anything of substance out of any of these homes.

The former defense attorney went on to further blast the defense team for playing on racist tropes. He praised the jury, which consisted of nine White women, two White men and one Black man, of seeing through those appeals.

It is very sad period, but we also must look at the jury system. I know that there were a lot of people in the Black community that was deeply concerned as to whether a predominantly White jury in Georgia would convict two White men.

And I’ve got to tell you, when you look at the way the defense play this case out, they consistently kept trying to close on the sensitivity, that, ‘Hey, there’s crime in your neighborhood. Hey, Black people commit crimes.’ They pulled out every one of the racial insensitivities that they could without clearly using the word race. And that went against them. It hurt. There were fair-minded white people. The majority of this jury was White. They were fair-minded White people who took a look at this case and they made an independent decision.

So what we as Americans should be proud of in this verdict, these verdicts, is that American citizens working together irrespective of this race thing, that they could come together and that they could make a decision based and predicated on the evidence that was presented to them.

Watch above, via Fox News.