ATLANTA – A federal judge on Monday handed down another life sentence to Travis McMichael, one of three white men in Georgia convicted of a federal hate crime in the pursuit and killing of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man, in February of 2020.
And in an equally dramatic move, U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood rejected a request by Mr. McMichael, who had previously been sentenced to life in prison for his state murder conviction, be allowed to serve the first years of the concurrent life sentences in federal prison.
His lawyer said that Mr. McMichael has received hundreds of death threats and argued in court that his client would be safer in the federal system and less likely to be subject to “vigilante justice.”
But several family members of Mr. Arbery went to court and argued that Mr. McMichael and the other two men convicted of murder should receive no special treatment. Marcus Arbery, Mr. Arbery’s father, said he wanted the men to “rot in state prison.”
“These three devils have broken my heart to pieces,” he said.
The sentencing hearing for Mr. McMichael, 36, in a courtroom in Brunswick, Ga., is the first of three hearings scheduled for Monday for the men whose actions, captured on video, horrified the nation and the world. Prosecutors argued that the murder of Mr. Arbery was the men’s version of vigilante justice, motivated by racism. The second man, the father of Mr. McMichael, Greg McMichael, 66, will be sentenced at 1 p.m. ET, and the third man who chased Mr. Arbery, William Bryan, has a hearing at 3 p.m.
Mr. McMichael shot Mr. Arbery at close range with a shotgun after the chase, which unfolded for several minutes Sunday afternoon in Satilla Shores, a suburban neighborhood outside Brunswick. The three white men gave chase in a pair of trucks as Mr Arbery tried desperately to get away from them.
Moments earlier, Mr Arbery had been inside a house under construction, and the men who killed him said they suspected he had committed a series of property crimes. The relatives of Mr. Arbery said that Mr. Arbery, an avid runner, had gone for a run on Sunday. In court proceedings, all three defendants were shown to have racial animosity toward blacks.
Mr. McMichael declined to speak in court Monday. The judge said he had given long and serious consideration to the question of his sentence. At one point, he referred to the February 2022 federal trial he presided over, in which all three men were found guilty of a hate crime.
It had been a fair trial, he said, “the kind of trial Ahmaud Arbery didn’t get before he was shot and killed.”
In addition to the life sentence on the hate crime charge of “interference with rights,” the judge sentenced Mr. McMichael to 20 years, to be served concurrently, for attempted kidnapping and 10 years, to be served consecutively, for federal weapons. to load
These judgments are likely to have little practical effect, because Mr. McMichael is already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the state murder conviction. The most pressing issue for Mr. McMichael was the question of where he would serve his time.
In a court filing last week, her attorney, Amy Lee Copeland, described the threats she had received.
“Threads of threats,” he wrote. “He stopped counting in January 2022, about 800 threats. The threats have included statements that his image has been spread throughout the state prison system on contraband cell phones, that people are ‘waiting’ for him, that he should not go to the yard and that correctional officers have pledged their willingness (either for pay or for free) to keep certain doors open and their backs turned to allow inmates to harm him.”
Ms. Copeland noted that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is conducting an investigation into dangerous conditions in Georgia’s prison system, made worse by understaffing, training problems and other factors. Ms. Copeland cited an analysis by Georgia Public Broadcasting that found 53 homicides had occurred in Georgia state prisons in 2020 and 2021.
Mr. McMichael, Greg McMichael and Mr. Bryan are currently being held at a local jail, the Glynn County Detention Center, where they have been held since their arrests in May 2020.
In her court filing, Ms. Copeland said that Mr. McMichael would “ideally” be housed in a federal prison “for the term of his concurrent federal sentence,” but “at a minimum” should be housed in a federal prison through appeals. process in your federal case.
In court, however, Ms. Copeland only asked that Mr. McMichael was housed in the federal system through the appeals process, allowing what she called a “cooling off” period that could help ensure his safety.
Ms Copeland said she recognized the “rich irony” of worrying about her client being a victim of vigilante justice. But he said if he is sent to a state prison in Georgia, “he will effectively face a death sentence through the back door.”
Prosecutors argued against allowing Mr. McMichael goes to federal prison first, noting that convicts typically serve their sentences first in the prison system of the government entity that prosecuted them first, in this case, the state of Georgia.
In the end, Judge Wood said he had “neither the authority nor the inclination” to send Travis McMichael to federal prison first.
A judge sentenced Greg McMichael in January to life in prison without the possibility of parole on the state murder charge he faced. Mr. Bryan was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
Both men now face possible federal sentences of life in prison for their hate crime convictions.