tonight -- >> by the jury find the defendant travis mcmichael, guilty. greg mcmichael, guilty. william r. bryan, guilty. >> the jury decides the fate of the men who killed ahmaud arbery. the joy and relief outside the courthouse. >> we have a lot of injustice, but finally we got justice. the victim's mother. her message for the mcmichael family. >> not only did my family lose, their family ost as well. >> and his father's hope. >> i knew definitely it was going down. >> this special edition of "nightline," "justice for ahmaud," will be right back.

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♪ good evening. thank you for joining us. one of the defense attorneys said today travis mcmichael and his father, quote, truly believed they were doing the right thing to protect their neighbors and friends, end zo quote. but the jury deciding the fate of the three men who killed ahmaud arbery did not agree. >> all rise for the jury. >> madam foreperson, i understand you have reached a verdict as to each defendant?

>> we have. >> reporter: after 11 hours of deliberations, the fate decided for the three men accused of murdering ahmaud arbery. >> verdict is as follows. count one. malice murder. we the jury find the defendant, travis mcmichael, guilty. >> oh! >> whoo! >> reporter: travis mcmichael who shot 25-year-old arbery while he was jogging on a georgia road found guilty on all nine counts, including murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment. the emotion in the courtroom palpable. >> i'm going to ask that whoever just made an outburst be removed from the court, please. >> reporter: arbery's father, marcus, unable to contain his reaction, leaving the courtroom before the full verdict was read. >> have a seat. >> reporter: the jury delivering a resounding statement. >> as to gregory mcmichael -- >> reporter: >> reporter: on the guilt of all three men. >> count two, felony murder. we the jury find the defendant, greg mcmichael, guilty. as to william r. bryan, count

five, felony murder. we, the jury, find the defendant, william r. bryan, guilty. >> reporter: travis mcmichael's father, gregory, found guilty on eight of the nine counts. neighbor william bryan guilty on six of the nine counts. >> the quick turnaround tells me the prosecution's case was so strong, it fed the jury the information they needed. >> reporter: outside the courtroom, cheers erupted. >> we have a lot of injustice, but finally we got justice. >> my grandmama say, you made your bed, sleep in it. >> reporter: the exhale of relief evident when i spoke to the family's attorney. >> if i can start with your reaction to the verdict? >> quickly, my mind thought about just all the names, byron. michael brown, tamir rice, philando castille, eric garner. finally, two times in one year. george floyd, ahmaud arbery.

jim crow is still alive and well, but we gaining on it. >> reporter: for the family of arbery, relief and prayer. >> god put us all together to make this happen. >> mr. arbery, if you take us back to that moment in the courtroom, we heard you make that audible reaction. what was going through your heart and mind in that moment? >> joy. when i heard that guilty verdict on the one that pulled the trigger, i really was -- i really was happy. because i knew justice was pouring down. >> god is good. >> reporter: arbery's mother, who sat in court day after day throughout often excruciating testimony, thanked those who rallied for her son. >> thank you for those who marched, those who prayed. you know him as ahmaud, i know him as ques. he will now rest in peace. >> reporter: a peace that's taken nearly two years to come. on february 23rd, 2020, arbery was running through a

predominantly white neighborhood in southern georgia when someone called 911 around 1:00 p.m. >> there's a guy in the house, right now, it's a house under construction. >> someone's breaking into it? >> no, it's open, it's under construction. >> reporter: surveillance video from the site shows arbery walking through, but he wasn't breaking the law. the homeowner told abc news nothing was missing or stolen. and that he never reported any burglaries. at second 911 call was made by travis mcmichael's father, gregory. >> i don't know what street we're on. stop! [ bleep ], stop! >> reporter: a short time later this video taken by defendant bryan shows arbery running, veering around a pickup truck, then struggling with travis, who's armed with a shotgun. arbery was not armed. travis mcmichael shot ahmaud arbery three times. arbery's death wouldn't make national headlines until three months after he was killed.

once that graphic cell phone video surfaced online. >> no justice, no peace! >> reporter: the killing viewed by many as a modern-day lynching. it took 74 days for charges to be brought against the three men. the mcmichaels and bryan maintaining they were trying to make a citizen's arrest, believing arbery was a thief. all pled not guilty. >> the defense had to argue that this was a citizen's arrest because except for a citizen's arrest, they would not be able to get to the idea of self-defense. because by all accounts, they provoked this interaction. >> reporter: since the trial started, more than a month ago, the prosecution and defense have painted starkly different narratives. >> and they made their decision to attack ahmaud arbery in their driveways. because he was a black man. running down the street. >> if this was a case about wanting to murder a black jogger, this if this was really

case about that, travis would not have reacted the way he reacted. >> reporter: special prosecutor lin that done koski attacked the claim of self-defense. >> you wan not be the -- you can't create the situation and then go, i was defending myself. >> reporter: picked apart their argument that they were executing a citizen's arrest. >> ahmaud arbery commit any offense in the presence of any of these defendants? the answer to that is, no. boom. citizen's arrest is gone. >> swear to tell the truth, whole truth, nothing but the truth? >> yes, sir. >> reporter: in a dramatic move, travis mcmichael, the man who shot and killed arbery, took the stand in his own defense. >> it was obvious that -- that he was attacking me, that if he would have got the shotgun from me, it's a life-or-death situation. and i'm going to have to stop him from doing this. so i shot. >> i think part of the problems that the defense had in putting on travis mcmichael is that his story started to morph and

change as it continued. >> behind the scenes, what jurors didn't see, there was a lot of argument about black pastors. one of the defense lawyers was upset that reverend jesse jackson and al sharpton and others kept appearing in the courtroom. >> we don't want any more black pastors coming in here, a bunch of folks came in here dressed like colonel sanders and white masks sitting in the back -- >> i object. >> the defense department interjecting subtle notes of race or racial animosity. >> reporter: in closing arguments, laura hoeg, defense attorney for gregory mcmichael, taking one final swipe at arbery that left the courtroom stunned. >> turning ahmaud arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought ahmaud arbery to satilla shores in his khaki shorts with no socks to

cover his long, dirty toenails. >> the concept of dirty, unkempt, beaten-up feet is a concept that many african-american people understand to relate as to the feet of our ancestors, the feet of runaway slaves, and to create that imagery, especially when there's no actual evidence presented in the case of that, brings in this racial aspect of dehumanizing ahmaud arbery. >> reporter: for arbery's mother that commen too much. she left the courtroom after it was uttered. >> she never mentioned the big hole that was in his chest from that gunshot wound. i mean, not only did he have dirty long toenails, he had a hole in his chest. >> you can zealously represent your client without being racist and discriminatory. >> reporter: the jury, 11 whites, one black. the prosecutor responsible for helping secure those guilty verdicts walking out to a hero's welcome.

[ cheers and applause ] >> the jury system works. when you present the truth to people and they can see it, they will do the right thing. that's what this jury did today in getting justice for ahmaud arbery. >> reporter: the three men now facing life in prison. f for ahmaud's father, this is just the first step. >> all children. not just black children. i wouldn't want to see no daddy watch their kid lose their life that day. it's all our problem. it's all our problem. >> we got a guilty verdict, and he will rest in peace finally. >> shortly after the verdict, i spoke to ahmaud arbery's mother, wanda cooper jones, about the long fight for justice she's been on. >> right now, as i sit here, i'm thankful that i didn't stop. back in 2020, when the murder first happened, it was 74 days without any arrest.

and it was 74 days there was no legal representation. very, very dark days. but in the midst of those dark days, i still had faith that god will see us through. >> what, if anything, if you could talk to the mcmichaels or their families, might you say to them on this night? >> you guys are wanting to yell possibly forever. you took a lot from my family and i. we took a loss that can't be replaced. but at the same time, you guys have three generations of loss. your father, the son, and the grandchildren. so not only did my family lose, their family lost as well. >> is it possible to pray for the mcmichaels, do you think? >> yes, it is possible. because again, like i said earlier, my family took a loss, their family took a loss as well. >> where do you go from here,

where should we go as a nation from here? >> as i sit here today, i'm not sure what i do from now. i have to retrain myself, that i'm a mother of three children, but i have a deceased child. how do you live with that? that's something that i have to learn how to live with. i'm not sure where i go from here, to be honest. up next, inside the verdict. what it means for america going forward. our panel with their insights. ar type 2 diabetes knocking you out of your zone? lowering your a1c with once-weekly ozempic® can help you get back in it. oh, oh, oh, ozempic®! my zone... lowering my a1c, cv risk, and losing some weight... now, back to the game! ozempic® is proven to lower a1c. most people who took ozempic® reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. and you may lose weight. adults lost on average up to 12 pounds.

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johns hopkins university history professor leah wright regur, "l.a. times" op-ed columnist elsie granderson, and abc international correspondent terry moran about the implications of this verdict. lz, let's start with you. a resounding guilty verdict today. did you have any doubts and think it might possibly go another way? >> of course. i, i live in america. regardless of how much the video showed, regardless of the testimony. i just have seen too much, we all have, not to wonder if this was going to be a guilty verdict or thought. >> leah, when i was speaking to attorney ben crump earlier today, he said, jim crow isn't dead yet but we're gaining on it. today's verdict, was it a watershed moment, do you think? >> this is huge. but it's huge for a number of different reasons. it's huge because while it doesn't bring justice, real justice would be ahmaud arbery still alive, it does bring a sense of accountability. it's a watershed moment because

we have a jury in the south that is predominantly white, all but one black juror, presided over by a white male judge, with a set of white prosecutors and white defense attorneys. essentially convicting this group of white men. and i think we should be pointing to the signals, perhaps not just a watershed event, but the beginnings of something transformative. that this is the end in georgia at least, of these vigilante citizen arrest laws. >> terry, you covered the rittenhouse case. the trials were different but had similarities. there was a legal process and a jury verdict in both cases. what do these two different verdicts say about our criminal justice system, do you think? >> i think it's the power of the jury system is what you see. you may agree or disagree with the verdict, but the jurors generally, in my experience, not just rittenhouse -- i've covered scores of criminal trials over the years -- they take their job really seriously. they listen to the law. they look at all the evidence.

they do try to do their duty. that is my experience. they've got a higher batting average than most of the rest of our government. you may not agree with the verdict, but they try their hardest. >> talk about the courtroom behavior of the defense attorneys, at one point criticizing the presence of black preachers in the court, another attorney talking about ahmad's hygiene. what kind of strategy was that? >> what was really fascinating, and perhaps unsurprising, is that the defense attorneys relied on an explicitly racialized and racist defense. we saw examples when they said, we wished we had had more bubbas on the jury. we also saw several references to these outbursts around black preachers. i think the one that really stunned not just the entire courtroom, perhaps the nation, but certainly had an impact on the jury for the negative, was the reference to ahmaud arbery as dirty, the reference to toenails. and you have to ask yourself, what were they thinking? one of the things that we know about juries in this country,

even juries that we might think of as rooted in bias or things like that, is that this -- in this day and age, they do not like explicit racism. >> lz, we saw the video of ah ahmaud arbery, a black man, being chased by white men with guns. for many, it was a painful reminder of america's past. did this verdict heal any wounds? >> no. and it doesn't bring me joy to say that, because you know, i want to be elated that justice was served. i want to be happy that ahmaud arbery's family can find some measure of peace, knowing that the men who killed him were convicted. but i also know that if there was no video, there would have been no trial. i also know that had it not been for video, that officer chauvin would still be on the streets of minneapolis. so until we get to the place in which we aren't reliant upon social media to make a video go

viral, until we're no longer reliant upon people to protest and march the streets day in and day out for justice to be served -- there can't be any healing. i mean, honestly, what exactly transpired over the course of these few weeks with this trial that rang different than, say, trayvon martin? which also needed protests, which needed video, which needed -- you know what i'm saying? i'm tired of going over the same cycle over and over again. so until we get to a place where we don't have to protest and march in the streets, in which we don't need 100 pastors to pray with the grieving family, when the justice system in and of itself can function without us marching and demanding justice, then i can start talking about healing. until then, we're in a hamster wheel. >> i hear you. fanny leigh hamer said, i'm sick

and tired of being sick ask tired. terry, you and i have known each other for a very long time. we're often asked to come in and give context to moments like this on a variety of areas. so last question to you. reverend al sharpton said brunswick, georgia, will go down in history as a place criminal justice took a different turn. from your perspective, what's the lasting impact of this case? >> byron, it does feel big to me, doesn't it? this idea for a little bit, with respect for my friend and colleague lj granderson, i agree with him, this doesn't mean anything until we go much further. but i was particularly moved as i listened to the verdict, not the verdict but when the judge polled the jurors and you heard soft, lovely, georgia drawls. each one of them affirming justice for the arbery family. you could hear there were bubbas on that jury. you could hear that. but i think the jury put their shoulders to the wheel in this case, and as lz points out

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♪ finally tonight, after two gut-wrenching verdicts in less than a week, we're mindful of the words of maya angelou who said, equal rights, fair play, justice are all like the air. we all have it, or none of us has it. that's "nightline" for this evening. thanks for the company, america. good night.