NC social justice activist, legal expert respond to conviction of men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery
Wednesday's guilty verdict of Travis McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael and their neighbor William Bryan is sending a message according to legal analysts.
Young activists on the frontlines of social and racial justice are also reacting.
"Young people are going to continue to use our voices to make sure this doesn't happen again,that we don't have Ahmaud Arberys in the Triangle or in rural North Carolina." said Greear Webb, a UNC Student and leader in Young Americans Protest. "It could happen here."
NCCU Law Professor Irving Joyner said the nearly all white jury managed to not get distracted by race and racist messages presented in this case.
Last year, Ahmaud Arbery was jogging in a neighborhood when the defendants shot and killed him, claiming self-defense.
Joyner said this case is a win for people of color, especially Black people.
WATCH: Full interview with Irv Joyner
"I'm very familiar with trials like this in the 1950s and 1960s where you know going in that a guilty verdict was not even a possibility in cases like this in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina and other places. This was a vindication verdict," said Joyner. "This is a verdict that is larger than the Arbery case, because it tends to restore a sense of credibility to the system in the minds of the African American, because many people did not believe that 11 whites, where there was a conscious effort to exclude African Americans from this jury would return a verdict of guilty. And a verdict of guilty in this short of period of time."
It took the jury approximately 10 hours reach their decision.
The defendants are facing a minimum of life in prison each.
