Ahmaud Arbery: 4 Cases That Explain Citizen’s Arrest Abuses

The tragic death of Ahmaud Arbery has garnered the attention of American media, politicians and activists for many reasons. The racial dynamics in the case have become a familiar focal point of discussion in American politics, especially in cases involving unarmed black men. The fact that video of the killing emerged more than 2 months after the incident only added fuel to the fire.

But the case of Ahmaud Arbery is perhaps even more controversial owing to one of the central legal issues of the case, the notoriously misunderstood and sticky concept of what’s known as a Citizen’s Arrest.

Arbery was killed in February while jogging in Glynn County, Georgia, by two men who claimed that he had been involved in string of burglaries in their neighbourhood. The men, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael, have claimed that their pursuit and killing of Arbery constituted a legal attempt to perform a citizen’s arrest, and that the shooting resulted from self defence during a struggle between Arbery and Travis McMichael. As of now the men have been arrested and are facing murder and aggravated assault charges.

In its most basic form, Citizen’s Arrest laws allow private citizens to arrest one another for a crime without a warrant until police can arrive. Some version of the law exists in nearly every state, but they vary dramatically in terms of what types of crimes the law applies to, and whether the citizen must witness the crime directly before attempting to perform an arrest.

For example, the law in Georgia states *quote*

“A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.”

However, this description is far from adequate in capturing the whole picture of how the nuances of the law apply, especially where the use of force is concerned, and indeed this is one of the primary reasons that many legal experts have argued that Citizen’s Arrest laws are outdated. The existence of both Open Carry and Stand Your Ground laws in Georgia, tends to complicate matters further.

Though there are no shortage of worthwhile dimensions to examine here, such as Greg McMichael’s former position as a police officer, the recusal of several prosecutors in the case, and of course the issues of race, we wanted to put politics aside and attempt to look specifically at the issue of Citizen’s Arrest, focusing on other cases that explain the issue, the public’s misunderstanding of it, and the ways it is commonly abused. We have also tried to focus wherever possible on cases that shed light on the potential outcome of the Ahmaud Arbery case.

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With that out of the way here is our list of “4 Cases That Explain Citizen’s Arrest Abuses”

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