By Jonathan Allen
(Reuters) -A lawyer for one of the three white men charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, in their southern Georgia neighborhood failed in an attempt to have the judge remove civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson from the courtroom on Monday.
The same lawyer, Kevin Gough, made a similarly unsuccessful attempt last week to get the court to prevent any more “Black pastors” attending the trial after Rev. Al Sharpton, another civil rights leader, was seen sitting with Arbery’s parents in the public gallery.
After the jury was sent out, Gough stood and said he objected to what he called “an icon in the civil rights movement” sitting next to Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones. He said the presence might influence jurors.
“How many pastors does the Arbery family have?” he said, referring to a similar objection he had made to Sharpton’s visit. “The seats in the public gallery of a courtroom are not like courtside seats at a Lakers game.”
Judge Timothy Walmsley was audibly exasperated as he rejected the motion by Gough, saying the court’s ruling last week that he would not issue any blanket bans on who could enter a public courtroom would still stand. He said he was not aware that Jackson was in the room until Gough made his motion.
The judge said it was odd that Gough kept objecting to Black pastors showing up and that he was “done talking about it.”
“At this point, I’m not exactly sure what you’re doing,” the judge said. “It’s almost as if you’re just trying to keep continuing this for purposes other than just bringing it to the court’s attention and I find that objectionable.”
Gough then said he wanted to move for a mistrial.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen, Editing by Nick Zieminski and Grant McCool)
