Ok, NOW the judge is getting a bit frustrated.
ETA: Gough made another motion complaining about people outside, and how little has been done to restrain any exposure in front of the courthouse.
All defense attorney's are making motions. Asking for about the 250th mistrial since it's started. The defense attorney's are now arguing amongst themselves.
ETA2: Part of the rebuttal from the judge to the defense was to present precedent. The prosecuting attorney just got up and providing 3 cases, 2 SCOTUS cases. They came with the receipts.
What a mess. As I said, this is looking to win on appeal. It is one thing to preserve options for appeal, but another thing to create them. When they complained about the judge not asking the jury everyday about any concerns, I thought it was about seeing things in media. I still think that is part of it. But what we have seen since, I think that had a lot to do with setting up this issue.
They asked the neighbor who called police about getting threats. He had. Prosecution never brought that up. Defense did. Juror then sent a note to the judge about what information about the jury is being revealed to the public.
Prosecution calls a witness who was a neighbor who does nothing but testify that this is a picture of Arbery. This might have been a sleazeball tactic by the prosecution, but it is also quite normal to bring in a witness to show this kind of picture. The jury has only seen Arbery wandering around a construction house, usually on night vision where people can look strange, and running around the neighborhood being chased.
Prosecution normally wants to get in a nice picture of the victim. A nice looking smiling young man. That creates a context that this isn't just a data point in the case. It was an actual human being who existed largely outside of the context of these other videos and who had friends and neighbors and was a real person. I think that was the intent rather than eliciting a response from the gallery, but I think it is also not uncommon to do this to get a response from the gallery. It is emotional rather than factual evidence (not that there is anything wrong with that, in some circumstances).
This is an obvious concern for defense. Jurors have heard about people getting threats just for calling the non-emergency police number to report a person on a property after that property owner talked to them about that person being on the property. Jurors with questions about their information being released. Demonstrations outside the courthouse. Now they see Jesse Jackson there. They will wonder if he is out there stirring up an angry mob. And he sort of is. Jurors could be influenced by the threat of what could happen after their verdict.
But I would certainly expect an appellant court would strongly consider that the defense brought this on themselves. They raised the issue of threats to the jury.
I also don't understand the comment about the possibility of people dressed like Colonel Sanders coming wearing white masks. I think the judge called it "reprehensible". I call it "confusing". Is this some dig at covid masks? Maybe the jury thinks Roddie likes fried chicken just like that black guy who got shot? That Roddie is an esteemed Kentucky Colonels beyond doubt of guilt? That White Supremacists all look like Kentucky Colonels?
It seems offensive but is so bizarre and obscure that I'm not sure I can even consider it racist. I think I could only convict him of "attempted racism".
