Warnock, Walker get personal in Georgia’s closing arguments
Fulton County’s chief state prosecutor made one of his trademark closing arguments Monday night, telling jurors Georgia’s law against interracial dating is just a “thought exercise” that has no bearing on the verdict.
“I’d like to stress it to you because it’s important,” Dougherty said. “There’s more to it than that. It’s not that simple.”
He added: “A jury doesn’t decide for a week or a month or a year what race a person is, or a person’s gender. A jury decides for maybe 20 to 30 minutes a person’s race and gender.”
Dougherty told jurors Georgia has been on the wrong side of the issue for years. He argued they were bound by previous legal rulings.
The prosecutor added that the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that “all lives are equal in the eyes of the law,” and jurors should judge Dalton’s case based on what really happened rather than just what Dalton said he did last July when police and prosecutors said he tried to stop an interracial relationship.
Dalton, who is black, has been charged with four counts of aggravated assault and was convicted on all but one.
But he’s not guilty, Dougherty said. He’ll have to explain to jurors why he told the woman he is dating “why we can’t date,” after he had been dating for a month. He said he and the woman planned to meet up at Georgia World Congress Center.
On April 24, Dalton stopped a traffic stop at a Shell station in Decatur and told a woman he was driving past “the place where you hook up,” according to testimony.
“That’s not really true,” he said. “I’m happy to tell the truth. The fact that there’s a lot of people out there that are a lot more educated than me, a lot more sensitive than me.”
Dalton was arrested and later charged with aggravated battery and interfering with public duties.
Dalton and the woman, identified as Amber Rose, dated for the next year before making plans to meet at the World Congress Center on the last day of August, according to their account to police.
At the trial, which lasted four days, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent testified how he got a woman who