On Nov. 24, the year and a half-old case about the murder of Ahmaud Arbery came to an end with his three killers being judged guilty of murder. Arbery was an African American male who, while jogging down his neighborhood, was chased down, shot, and killed by three white men. 

Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Bryan are now facing potential life sentences after the guilty verdict was read. However, for the prosecution and Arbery’s family, reaching this verdict was not an easy task. There was much controversy on how this issue was handled, especially regarding the jury selection.

“There seemed to be discrimination in the way that the jury was selected,” Brandon Choi (10), a sophomore studying current events, said. “The area where the jury was selected from had a large black population, but all except one of the jury members ended up being white after the selection process.”

Despite this hurdle, much credit for the guilty verdict is attributed to the prosecution lawyer, Linda Dunikoski, who intentionally avoided the loaded subject of race in her arguments being careful not to anger the all-white jury. Her carefully crafted arguments from the opening to the closing statements outlined the morals and the humans of the case, rather than the topic of race.

“I think that this case is quite significant because a lot of  people on a very wide range of the political spectrum actually agreed that this was a heinous crime,” Peter Kim, a student studying politics, said. “The way they were tracking Arbery, was reminiscent of early 20th century lynchings, and the fact that the three killers were convicted shows progress in America.