More on the Georgia lynching: from the Guardian Wednesday:

According to a police report obtained by the New York Times, Gregory McMichael, a former police officer and district attorney’s investigator, told investigators the incident began when he spotted Arbery from his front yard “hauling ass” down the street.

I.e. running, aka jogging. Running is a thing that people do. It’s a popular form of exercise. Furthermore, it seems to me, that kind of running looks quite different from running to escape a threat or the cops. Exercise running is systematic in a way that fleeing danger is not. You’d think it would be recognizable as such even to a former DA’s investigator.

But then it’s widely known that there’s a whole separate category of “while black” activities that automatically come under suspicion. Driving while black, walking while black, shopping while black, playing in a park while black – all draw special fear and suspicion from white people.

According to a letter obtained by the Times, the prosecutor in Brunswick argued there was not probable cause to arrest the McMichaels because they were legally carrying firearms, had a right to pursue a burglary suspect and use deadly force to protect themselves.

Wait just a fucking minute there. In what sense was Arbery a burglary suspect? Only in the nonsensical sense that McMichael “suspected” him – apparently because he saw him hauling ass jogging down the street. Arbery wasn’t a genuine burglary suspect, he was a suspect only in the jumping-to-conclusions mind of the ex-cop who got him killed. Outside the moss-infested mind of Gregory McMichael, Arbery was simply a young guy out running.

If it’s legal in Georgia to murder someone as long as you then explain that you “suspected” that someone of burglary, Georgia needs to fix that law yesterday.