The US men who started a neighborhood chase that ended in the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery have been sentenced to life in prison for committing a federal hate crime.
Key points:
- The three convicts were found to have attacked Ahmaud Arbery because he was black
- Both McMichaels requested to be sent to a federal prison, citing fear of violence from other inmates.
- Neither will be eligible for parole while serving a life sentence for the 25-year-old’s murder.
A U.S. District Court judge handed down the life sentences against Travis McMichael, 36, and his father, Greg McMichael, 66. William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, who recorded the video of the mobile phone murder, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Since the McMichaels were previously sentenced to life in prison without parole in state court for the murder of Mr. Arbery, a black man, the hate crime verdict was largely symbolic.
A federal jury in February convicted the McMichaels and neighbor Bryan of violating Mr. Arbery’s civil rights, concluding that he was targeted because he was black.
All three were also found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and both McMichaels were convicted of using weapons in the commission of a violent crime.
The McMichaels armed themselves with guns and used a pickup truck to chase Mr Arbery after the 25-year-old drove past their home on February 23, 2020.
Bryan joined the chase in his own truck and recorded a phone video of Travis McMichael shooting Mr Arbery with a shotgun.
The McMichaels told police they suspected Mr Arbery was a burglar.
Investigators determined he was unarmed and had committed no crime.
The presiding judge in U.S. District Court said Travis McMichael had received a fair trial.
“And it’s not lost on the court that it was the kind of trial Ahmaud Arbery didn’t get before he was shot and killed,” the judge said.
Before sentencing, the judge heard from members of Mr Arbery’s family.
His mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said she heard every shot fired at her son every day.
“It’s so unfair, so unfair, so unfair that they killed him while he wasn’t even committing a crime,” he said.
Greg McMichael had already been sentenced in state court to life in prison without parole. (AP: Stephen B. Morton)
Greg McMichael addressed the Arbery family before he was sentenced, saying their loss was “beyond description”.
“I’m sure my words mean very little to you, but I want to assure you that I never meant for any of this to happen,” he said.
“There was no malice in my heart or my son’s heart that day.”
Travis McMichael declined to address the court, but his lawyer said his client had no convictions before Mr Arbery’s murder and had served in the US Coast Guard.
He said a lighter sentence would be more consistent with what defendants on similar charges have received in other cases, noting that the police officer who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, received 21 years in prison for violate Mr. Floyd’s civil rights. However, he was not accused of targeting Mr. Floyd because of his race.
Arbery’s killing became part of a wider trial in the US about racial injustice and the murders of unarmed black people, such as Floyd and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.
Those two cases also prompted the Justice Department to file federal charges.
“The evidence we presented at trial proved … what so many people felt in their hearts when they saw the video of Ahmaud’s tragic and unnecessary death: This would never have happened if he had been white,” said the prosecutor before Travis McMichael was convicted.
The killers fear retribution in prison
The McMichaels were among three defendants convicted in February of federal hate crimes.
A state Superior Court judge sentenced all three men to life in prison in January for Arbery’s murder, and both McMichaels were denied the possibility of parole.
All three defendants have remained incarcerated in the custody of US marshals while awaiting sentencing following their federal convictions.
Because they were charged and convicted of murder for the first time in state court, the protocol would have turned them over to the Georgia Department of Corrections to serve their life sentences in a state prison.
Travis McMichael opened fire on Ahmaud Arbery with a shotgun. (AP: Stephen B. Morton)
In court documents, both Travis and Greg McMichael asked the judge to divert them to a federal prison, saying they would not be safe in a Georgia prison system that was the subject of a US Department of Justice investigation focused on the violence among prisoners.
Travis McMichael’s attorney said his client had received hundreds of threats to kill him as soon as he arrived at the state prison and that his photo had been circulated there via illegal phones.
“I am concerned, your honor, that my client is effectively facing a death sentence at the back door,” he said, adding that “retribution and revenge” were not sentencing factors, even for to a defendant who was “publicly reviled.”
Ahmaud Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery Sr, said Travis McMichael had shown his son no mercy and he deserved to “rot” in state prison.
“You killed him because he was a black man and you hate black people,” he said. “You deserve no mercy.”
The presiding judge said she did not have the authority to order the state to relinquish custody of Travis McMichael to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but she was also unwilling to do so in his case. He also refused to hold Greg McMichael in federal custody.
During the February hate crime trial, prosecutors bolstered their case that Arbery’s killing was racially motivated by showing the jury roughly two dozen text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and William Bryan used racist slurs and made disparaging comments about black people.
Defense lawyers for the three men argued that the McMichaels and Mr. Bryan did not persecute Mr. Arbery because of his race, but acted on a serious, if mistaken, suspicion that Mr. Arbery had committed crimes in his neighborhood.
ABC/children