Law Professor on MSNBC Derides Nearly All-White Ahmaud Arbery Jury: ‘Sounds Like the Old Jim Crow South’

A law professor on MSNBC Thursday derided the nearly-all-White jury in the case related to Ahmaud Arbery – a Black man who was shot and killed by three White men in Georgia last year – and said it “sounds like the old Jim Crow South.”

The jury for the trial, which is scheduled to begin on Friday, has 11 White people and just one Black person.

On Katy Tur Reports, guest anchor Chris Jansing said that the defense was unhappy with the makeup of the jury. The lawyer representing William Bryan, who filmed the shooting, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the original pool lacked White men over 40 without a four-year college degree, a demographic that he called ‘Bubbas or Joe six-packs’ to diversify the jury.”

“What do you make of that?” Jansing asked Georgetown University Law professor Paul Butler.

“Now all three defendants have a jury of Bubbas. I guess they think that that’s their peers. Again, 11 white people,” said Butler. “This sounds like the old Jim Crow South. It doesn’t sound like what we’d expect in a case involving a modern-day lynching in a district that has about 30 percent of the jury pool being White.”

“Ironically in Minneapolis, where Derek Chauvin was tried for murder of George Floyd, there’s a smaller percentage of Black people in that city’s population, but that jury was half Black. In this case, the county’s about 30 percent African-American. One Black out of 12 people on that jury. That’s a crying shame.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.