Different juries, same sentences. Travis McMichael and his father Gregory, who were sentenced to life in prison two years ago by the Georgia judiciary for stalking and killing young black jogger Ahmaud Arbery, were given a new life sentence Monday, this time before a federal jury. The father and son have been found guilty of a “hate crime,” as has their neighbor William Bryan, who participated in the hunt for the jogger and whose verdict is expected to be known at trial.
“My son was shot not once, twice, but three times. Your Honor, I feel every bullet fired every day,” said Ahmaud Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, before the verdict was announced.
“hate crime”
During the trial, prosecutors specifically listed the particularly blatant racial slurs the three men had used in the past, with the aim of explaining the state of mind of the defendants when they went in pursuit of Ahmaud Arbery. According to prosecutors, McMichael’s son, for example, described African Americans as “criminals”, “monkeys”, “savages and subhumans”.
Ahmaud Arbery “was lynched because he was black because he jogged,” family attorney Ben Crump, who had also defended relatives of George Floyd, an African American man who died of asphyxiation, told reporters Tuesday on the knee of a white police officer.
“I believe this is the first federal hate crime conviction in the state of Georgia,” he added. “Hate crime” in the United States refers to an act directed against a target because of certain characteristics of their identity.