Slavery-era Georgia law is key defense argument in trial over Ahmaud Arbery's killing

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

(Reuters) - A pivotal defense argument of the three white men on trial in Georgia for killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger, is that they were trying to make a citizen's arrest under a Civil War-era law that was later repealed amid an uproar over the shooting.

When the fatal encounter occurred on Feb. 23, 2020, it was legal in Georgia for people to arrest someone where they had "reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion" that the person had just committed a felony. Outcry over the killing led to lawmakers revoking the statute in May.

Legal observers say prosecutors will seek to convince the jury that there was no felony over which to arrest Arbery, 25, and that the three men lacked the "reasonable and probable suspicion" required under the old citizen's arrest law. The trial is in the second week of jury selection.

Before Arbery's killing, the law had been largely unchanged since it was codified in 1863, when Georgia was part of the slaveholding Southern Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/slavery-era-georgia-law-key-100650245.html

[nykym]

1. And please tell me

how these gobbers knew of that law.

[ret5hd]

2. Barney Fife

[SYFROYH]

3. I'm no legal expert but I understand lots of states and countries have citizen arrest options

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest#Common_law

I don't think they have much to do with the southern Confederacy except that most laws in most states were used against African Americans in ways not used against whites.

[mercuryblues]

4. I would argue the the state was not part

of the USA at the time the law was enacted. All the laws enacted during the time Georgia seceded not valid after it became part of the US.