What I find extraordinary is that Bryant didn't just make a deal to throw the McMichaelses under the bus. He could have come at it from the angle that he knew his neighbour was an ex-cop, therefore thought it was reasonable for him to assume what they were doing was legal, if Greg McMichaels said so.
As I said in the posts above, I think that is coming. They will say that if the McMichaels based their pursuit of a citizen's arrest on nothing legal, that doesn't mean Roddy is guilty. He based his pursuit on what he reasonably believed was a former police officer chasing a known suspicious person and that it was reasonable for Roddy to believe that a former police officer would only be doing that if it was lawful. If Greg mischaracterized that pursuit, that is on Greg. Roddy was just doing what he thought was the right thing to legally help capture a criminal in the community.
In terms of plea deal, I don't think there was not much option. This became a big case because the DA tried to sweep this under the rug. A great deal of publicity. I think Roddy had already told all of this to police, so there wouldn't be any plea deal to give up more information. With the public pressure, the new DA would be reluctant to let him off easy.
As I said, that could backfire in terms of Roddy. In the deferred opening they could throw the McMichaels under the bus. Roddy was misled by the McMichaels into thinking this was a lawful arrest when it was not. That is on them. Roddy was just trying to do the right thing.
That may work. He was maybe was a good guy just trying to help catch a felon in the neighborhood. Frankly, if I was a juror and I heard that I would probably have reasonable doubt.
The thing is, the ONLY thing that Arbery had been doing was trespassing (no different to what plenty of other people had done in the weeks beforehand). Trespass in this situation, under Georgia Law is a misdemeanour, not a felony. The law is very clear about this - the suspect must be committing, or have committed a felony in order to justify pursuit and citizens arrest, and certainly not pursing the suspect with SUV's and committing vehicular assault.
It is worse than that. The McMichaels didn't even know that he was trespassing that day. They didn't witness it. According to prosecution, and not contradicted by defense, Greg did not hear anything from the neighbor pointing at Arbery running down the street. Greg said they chased him (and later said they were doing a citizen's arrest) because it looked like he was running away from something and might have hurt somebody or something.
He didn't know where Arbery came from or what he had been doing. He was just, as he said when he called 911, "a black guy is running down the street."
He did no have a probable suspicion of a felony. Or of any other crime. He didn't know he was trespassing. He didn't know anything other than Arbery had been seen wandering around the construction site and that he was now running down the street. He didn't even have knowledge of trespassing on that day.
Greg based his decision to pursue Arbery (only later claiming intent to citizen's arrest) on Arbery being filmed wandering around the site, Travis confronting him a week or two before when he was on the lawn of that site, and that he was a black guy running down the street. He had not witnessed any crime. No probable suspicion of any felony, especially on that day.
Just someone they had seen and thought was maybe suspicious of something and running down the street. So go with trucks and guns and threaten to "blow you head off" and get him "trapped like a rat" and then when trapped kill him with a shotgun. And then say "******* ******".
