Ahmaud Arbery: Slain Black man's family angry that jury in murder trial is nearly all-White

Ahmaud Arbery's family has expressed outrage over the selection of an almost all-White jury in his murder trial.

Arbery, an African American, was killed during a confrontation with Gregory McMichael, his son Travis, and their neighbour William Bryan.

''It is outrageous that Black jurors were intentionally excluded to create such an imbalanced jury,'' said the family attorney Benjamin Crump.

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The jury in the high-profile case includes 11 White people and one Black person. It is due to be sworn in and hear opening statements on Friday.

''There appears to be intentional discrimination,'' said Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley.

He nevertheless accepted the "race-neutral" reasons offered by the defence lawyers of the three men accused of murder.

Interestingly, about 25 per cent of the population of Glynn County, where the trial is taking place is black. It has a total population of 85,000.

Previously, a small amount of THC, a psychoactive compound in marijuana, was found in Arbery's blood.

However, a Georgia judge ruled that Arbery's mental health records are not admissible as evidence.

A graphic video of the shooting of the unarmed Arbery went viral on social media and added fuel to last year's protests against racial injustice sparked by the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The three men contend they mistook the jogger for a burglar active in their coastal neighborhood of Satilla Shores and invoked a Georgia law allowing ordinary citizens to make arrests.

Before Arbery's killing, the law had been largely unchanged since it was codified in 1863 when Georgia was part of the slaveholding Southern Confederacy during the US Civil War.

Arbery became one of the symbols of countrywide "Black Lives Matter" protests against racial injustice and police violence.

(With inputs from agencies)