How "The People" Pressured a Georgia Judge Into a Tragic Miscarriage of Justice

And He Still Does Not Even Know It

On Friday, February 26, Judge Timothy Walmsley participated in a symposium hosted by the College of Coastal Georgia. Speaking engagements like these have come Walmsley’s way since he presided over the trial of Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael, and William Bryan in the February 2020 shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery.

That he tried the McMichael/Bryan case is not what made Walmsley a minor star on the progressive speaker circuit. What made him a star is that he condemned the three men to life in prison. Had he managed the case in such a way that the men were acquitted, as they should have been, or even convicted of manslaughter, no university would invite him anywhere. If one did, Walmsley would have needed serious security. Such is the life of a judge in contemporary America.

Arbery runs up to McMichael vehicle, veers right, then turns sharp left to grab Travis’s shotgun. Local DA ruled shooting justifiable.

I have written about this case extensively. The critical variable is that Arbery was black and the three accused killers white. A secondary variable is that the trial took place just months after Derek Chauvin was tried for murdering George Floyd in Minneapolis. Each of the accused men was doomed before his trial began and for the same reason.

Without intending, Walmsley told the amenable Coastal Georgia audience what that reason was. He boiled it down to the words “the people.” As Walmsley told his story, he came to the courthouse in Glynn County, Georgia, as a “blank slate.” He was not from Georgia, a fact he shared with his audience. He was originally from South Africa, a fact few knew. Had the three men been acquitted, all of America would have known.

Walmsley presided over the trial “at a time when the narrative in this country was that a community like Glynn county, Brunswick, a case like the Aubrey case could not be tried in in this community and that bothered me.” He expected the jurors to reach a fair verdict, but “many people said this community couldn’t do that.” Who these “people” were that set the implicitly racist “narrative,” Walmsley never said. The photo on top and the one below suggest an answer.

In Minneapolis a few months prior Judge Peter Cahill faced perhaps even greater pressure from “the people” than Walmsley did. Like Walmsley, he yielded to it and allowed four innocent police officers to be imprisoned, Derek Chauvin for 22 years.

Walmsley called the case “a life-altering experience.” Although he had been on the Superior Court for nine years and tried many murder cases, he had never handled a case this public or this national. “I learned to be a different kind of judge,” he said. This new kind of judge was responsive to public pressure.

“What I took from the case,” said Walmsley, “was how important it was as a judge to make sure that no matter what ended up happening in that case, whether you agreed with the verdict or not, people could accept the verdict.” There it is again, the “people.” In 2021 Glynn County, the “people” that mattered included the interest groups, the mobs, the media, and, as I documented recently, the churches. They all wanted, no demanded, guilty verdicts. Almost no one dared speak up for the accused.

Arbery caught on camera casing a house under construction near the McMichaels’

Even before they heard the evidence, the people let the judge know that if there were no justice, as they defined it, there would be no peace. One could understand Walmsley’s timidity in the face of this pressure, even forgive it, but what is unforgivable was the sentencing.

“When I thought about this,” said Walmsley in passing sentence, “I thought from a lot of different angles. And I kept coming back to the terror that must have been in the mind of the young man running through Satilla Shores.” Although the jurors were not allowed to know about Arbery’s chronically criminal, mentally disturbed past, Walmsley did.

He knew that Arbery had been pillaging the neighborhood. He knew that he charged Travis McMichael and seized his gun. He knew that under Georgia law the McMichaels had the right to detain Arbery for the police. But to please the people, he sentenced the McMichaels to the unspeakably cruel life without parole.

As to Bryan, who recorded the shooting from his truck, Walmsley sentenced him to life in prison with the chance of parole after 30 years. Said the judge, “Mr. Bryan used his vehicle in a way to impede Mr. Arbery's course of travel.”

Ultimately, Walmsley told his admirers at Coastal Georgia, “The people understood.” No, the people did not understand. I am not even sure Walmsley did.

My newest book, Empire of Lies, is available in ebook and print versions at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If you sign up to be a paid subscriber, you will receive a free signed copy when you email me, jackcashill@yahoo.com, with your name, address and any preferred inscription.