Why we must stand against vigilantism

While justice was served in the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial we must act to prevent similar crimes

American films celebrate vigilantes.

Whether it’s Batman movies, Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey character in the Death Wish film series or just about any movie today starring Liam Neeson, vigilantes are shown on screen as good guys who bring justice and order to a lawless society.

They are portrayed as having to take action after a murder, rape or kidnapping of a loved one because police and prosecutors are either inept, corrupt or restricted by laws and society that have become too lenient toward criminals. 

In the past, only white men played vigilantes in these revenge-oriented plot lines. But in a nod to diversity, Hollywood has expanded the role to African Americans and other racial minorities and women.

But expanding the race, ethnicity or gender of who portrays vigilantes in movies and on tv, does not change the fundamental flaw of the vigilante screen hero: They are wrongfully and unconstitutionally acting as judge, jury and executioner.

In real life, vigilantes sometimes kill innocent people like Ahmaud Arbery.

Arbery liked to jog.

He ran through the neighborhood and other areas near his home in Brunswick, Georgia, to clear his head.

Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man was jogging, when he was confronted by three white men, in February 2020.

They cornered Arbery after finding out he had been seen on a surveillance camera at a nearby house under construction and wanted to question him about recent burglaries in the area.

He had nothing in his hands and ran from the men for five minutes before one of them shot three times at him at close range with a shotgun. There was no evidence Arbery had committed any crime. He had enrolled at a technical college and was preparing at the time to study to become an electrician like his uncles.

Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William Bryan Jr. were convicted on charges of felony murder. The murder convictions came on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

“This is the second Thanksgiving we’ve had without Ahmaud. But at the same time, I’m thankful. This is the first Thanksgiving we are saying we got justice for Ahmaud,” Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday.

In the days after her son was killed. Cooper-Jones got a call from the mother of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teen killed by a man who successfully claimed self-defense during his murder trial after confronting Martin as he walked in his gated community. Martin was visiting relatives.

The week before the convictions in the Arbery trial, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges by a jury in Wisconsin after killing two people during a protest against police brutality last year. The shooter and his victims were all white.

Rittenhouse was 17 when he travelled 15 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where multi-racial demonstrations were being held to protest the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white police officer.

Armed with a loaded AR-15-style assault rifle, Rittenhouse joined a group of armed vigilantes who brandished their weapons at the protesters, he shot and killed two people and wounded a third. In court he argued that he fired in self-defense after he was attacked and in fear for his life.  

There are significant factual differences in the Arbery and Rittenhouse cases. 

In the Rittenhouse case, some critical evidence was withheld from the jury.

For example, Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder disallowed the people shot by Rittenhouse from being called victims, but allowed other words like “rioter,” “looters” or “arsonists” to be used.

In the Rittenhouse case, the prosecution made serious errors. For example, prosecutors had initially pushed to have a 29-second video taken days before the fatal shootings last August admitted as part of the record. According to a clip first published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, two weeks before the shooting Rittenhouse allegedly openly declared that he wished to shoot people he saw coming out of a CVS store, who he believed were shoplifting. “Bro, I wish I had my f—ing AR. I’d start shooting rounds at them.”

Prosecutors ultimately did not try to introduce the evidence at trial.

The key difference is that the prosecution was able to show Travis McMichael as the aggressor, chasing Arbery down. In the Rittenhouse case, the defense was able to show Joseph Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse down, before the teen fatally shot him.   

In the Arbery case, acquittal would have been a shock. In the Rittenhouse case, the killer was widely expected by many legal experts to be acquitted.

But what the Arbery, Rittenhouse and Travyon Martin cases have in common is vigilantism. In all three cases, someone took on the traditional role of law enforcement and while claiming to protect private property and acting in self-defense, killed another person.

Vigilantes should not be confused with self-defense or people who participate in Neighborhood Watch groups and other community organizations that work with police to reduce crime. 

Instead, vigilantes impose their own untrained and misguided view of the law. 

They undermine law enforcement and the criminal justice system by violating the essential legal principle of “innocent until being proven guilty.”

A mob or individual taking vengeance upon a person without giving them due process is not justice. 

This is the mentality that led to white lynch mobs of Blacks in the south.

While there is a growing local, state and national efforts to enact police reform to stop the use of excessive force there also must be efforts to stop vigilantism.

After Ahmaud Arbery’s death, the Georgia Legislature repealed the citizen’s arrest law that defense attorneys tried to use to justify chasing him, banning people who aren’t officers from detaining people outside of shoplifting. The repeal of this law was long overdue and should be drastically changed or removed across the country.  

Irv Randolph is an award-winning journalist and creator of The Randolph Report, a newsletter dedicated to pursuing truth and justice. Sign up for free and get an independent view on politics, race and culture delivered to your inbox every week.