In the 1863 law, Georgia allowed any resident to arrest someone they suspect committed a crime, a law that critics say was enacted to detain people suspected of being runaway slaves. The shooting was caught on cellphone video that went viral. The citizen’s arrest law came under scrutiny after the February 2020 death of Arbery, 25, who was chased down and shot dead as he jogged through his southern Georgia neighborhood. It achieves meaningful reform to prevent vigilantism." Republican Representative Bert Reeves, the primary sponsor of the bill, said the bill was a "common sense move that should have been done a long time ago. Kemp said in a release the bill repealed "Civil War-era language in our laws that is ripe for abuse." "Ahmaud was the victim of vigilante-style violence that has no place in Georgia," Kemp told the media. The Georgia General Assembly approved the bill across party lines by wide margins in both the House and Senate, and now it is headed to Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who has said he will sign it. The Arbery case garnered international outrage with civil rights activists saying it marked yet another example of a targeted attack on a Black man. Georgia overhauled a Civil War-era law Wednesday that allowed residents to arrest anyone they suspected of committing a crime - a "citizen's arrest" law invoked by the defense of the three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery last year.
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