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Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of the three men charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery in southeastern Georgia last year.

Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William "Roddie" Bryan — all of whom are white — are accused of killing Arbery, who was Black.

The Feb. 23, 2020, killing was one of several deaths last year that ignited a wave of racial justice protests across the U.S.

Here's what you need to know about the case:

A former high school athlete, Arbery loved to run, according to family members.

He was out for a jog when he encountered the three men charged with his murder, who chased him down in pickup trucks.

"Here we are in the South and we witnessed a lynching," Bobby Henderson, co-founder of the grassroots group A Better Glynn, 

. "How far are we from 1892? That's what's on the line."

The defendants say they believed Arbery was a thief

Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory McMichael, 

 they thought Arbery might have been responsible for a series of burglaries in the residential neighborhood, but police never connected him to any.

As the McMichaels were trying to stop Arbery, a fight broke out in the road and Arbery was shot three times with a shotgun. 

Bryan, a family friend, was present for the killing and captured it on video.

Robert Rubin, the attorney for Travis McMichael, said the men were simply trying to detain Arbery under Georgia's former citizen's arrest law and only resorted to violence when Arbery fought them and fought over possession of Travis McMichael's gun.

 its citizen's arrest law, in part because of Arbery's death.

Prosecutors have charged the men with felony murder

The Department of Justice has filed federal charges against the men including hate crimes, accusing them of targeting Arbery because of his race.

The investigation has been marred by conflicts

None of the men were charged immediately after Arbery's shooting and they remained free for about 10 weeks until the video footage captured by Bryan became public.

During the investigation, several prosecutors recused themselves from the case after potential conflicts arose and public pressure forced them to step aside.

Former district attorney Jackie Johnson, who was voted out of office in November, has since been 

 with misconduct for interfering with police at the scene of the shooting. She has denied wrongdoing.

The charges came after Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr 

 the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to look into Johnson and another district attorney's handling of the case.

 about the Glynn County Police Department, which initially investigated Arbery's death. Gregory McMichael was an officer in the department in the 1980s and later worked as an investigator in the district attorney's office.   

Crime, Law and Justice

Social Issues

Conversations around race and racial justice

Joe Hernandez

Author

Three white men are accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man shot and killed as he was jogging down a residential street after being chased by pickup trucks. Jury selection begins Monday.

What you need to know about the trial set to begin in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery

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