BRUNSWICK, Ga. — An attorney for one of the men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery made an appalling comment a couple of months ago about the state of the victim's feet when he was murdered.
In a failed attempt to get a jury to acquit her client, Greg McMichael, in Arbery's murder, Hogue's comments about Arbery's "long, dirty toenails" drew distain nationwide. The comment even prompted Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones to exit the courtroom.
Cooper-Jones was back in the Glynn County courtroom Friday for the sentencing of McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and their neighbor William "Roddie" Bryan.
The mother gave an emotional victim impact statement to the court about her son pleading with the judge to give the convicted killers life in prison. Not lost in her comments was a retort to Hogue's crass remarks about her son's feet.
"He (Ahmaud Arbery) was messy. He sometimes refused to wear socks, or take good care of his good clothing," Cooper-Jones said reading from a prepared statement. "I wish he would have cut and cleaned his toenails before he went out for that jog that day. I guess he would have if he knew he was going to be murdered."
The remark was clearly aimed at Hogue for when she turned the focus of her closing arguments in November to Arbery's feet saying, "Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts, with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails."