The Atlanta lawyer who has joined the legal team representing the family of Ahmaud Arbery—who said he is working on litigation related to the fatal shooting, and predicts that "there's going to be a ton of people getting sued"—certainly has experience in police shooting cases where video plays a crucial role.

In a phone interview with the Daily Report Thursday, L. Chris Stewart of Stewart Trial Attorneys would not give details of planned lawsuits, but he said he will serve as local counsel for S. Lee Merritt of Philadelphia, the civil rights attorney representing Arbery's mother. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump of Tallahassee, Florida, is representing Arbery's father.

Stewart said he has known both Merritt and Crump for years and was quick to say yes when Merritt asked for his help.

"This happened in my state," said Stewart, who has traveled around the country to represent families of young, unarmed black men shot by white police officers.

Arbery was killed on Feb. 23. No arrests were made until May 7—two days after the release on social media of a video of the shooting. Gregory McMichael, 64, a former Brunswick police officer and district attorney investigator, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, were charged with murder and aggravated assault.

Crump has said the Arbery case bears a chilling similarity to the one that made him famous: He represented the family of Trayvon Martin—the teenager killed by a neighbor in Florida while walking home in 2012. The shooters in both the Martin and Arbery cases claimed justification because they were suspicious that the young men were involved in recent neighborhood burglaries.

Arbery's death also brings up memories of a case that put Stewart in the national spotlight in 2015—a case that was largely defined by video of the incident at issue. Stewart negotiated a $6.5 million settlement with the city of North Charleston, South Carolina, for the family of Walter Scott, who was killed by a police officer.

In that case, the officer blamed Scott for fighting over a taser. But the officer was arrested—and later pleaded guilty—after a video of the shooting was released on social media. The video showed Scott running away, and the officer shooting him in the back. The officer then radioed a colleague to say he shot someone who was trying to take his taser. The officer is shown walking to the body and planting his taser on the ground.

As with the Scott shooting, no arrests were made for Arbery's death until after a video of the shooting went viral on the internet. And in both cases, police initially blamed the victim, Stewart said. Scott was blamed for running away from an approaching officer. His family believed he ran because he knew he had an outstanding arrest warrant for unpaid child support.

Arbery was called a burglary suspect by one of the prosecutors—who later recused himself and was replaced, and is now the subject of a Georgia Bureau of Investigation inquiry. But the video showed Arbery unarmed and jogging down a road, being confronted by two men with guns, struggling with one of them and being shot.

"All too often, African Americans get justice by video," Stewart said during a rally Wednesday that he attended with Merritt. "And that is not just immoral and improper and illegal, that is not justice."