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BRUNSWICK — A Trial Officers Monday sentenced white father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael to life in prison. A federal hate crime in which a black man named Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot dead after jogging in his suburban Georgia neighborhood in 2020, was killed in a case of racist violence and racism. American vigilance.
U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godby Wood said Travis McMichael, 36, a former U.S. Coast Guard mechanic, and Gregory, 66, a former Glyn County police officer who later worked for the District Attorney's Office, said she sentenced to McMichael of Office in the coastal city of Brunswick.
Both were serving life sentences with no possibility of parole after being convicted of Arbery's murder in a state trial last November. They were the first two of three white men convicted in February in subsequent federal trials to be sentenced in back-to-back hearings on Monday. In sentencing McMichael, Wood said a cell phone video of him shooting Arbery with a shotgun at point-blank range was widely viewed and burned into her memory.
"You acted because of the color of Mr. Arbery's skin," the judge told McMichael.
Two McMichaels and their neighbor William "Lody" Brian, 52, was found guilty of violating Arbery's civil rights by attacking him because of his race and attempted kidnapping. McMichaels was also convicted of federal firearms charges. Brian, who worked as a mechanic, is due to be sentenced on Monday.
Arbery's case is his one in a string of black killings in recent years that have brought attention to issues of racism in the U.S. criminal justice system and law enforcement. It also highlighted the wider issue of gun violence in the United States.
Marcus He Arbery, the father of the murdered man, said in court at his first trial: He mentioned Travis McMichael, adding, "You hate black people."
Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said at the second hearing seeking life imprisonment for Gregory McMichael, "Her father actually took her son's life." I had a hard time understanding that I could accompany him," he said.
Travis McMichael, who refused the right to testify at the hearing, had sought through his attorney to be transferred from the state prison system to a federal prison deemed safer.Wood The rules, he said, would require McMichael to return to the state prison system, where he is already serving a life sentence.
His attorney, Amy Lee Copeland, said he received death threats.
"This case involves vigilante justice concerns, at least in part," she told the court. "Judge, I find it ironic that you express my concern that my client faces vigilante justice."
The three men were found guilty of murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and felonies in state court last November. Convicted of criminal intent, the jury dismissed the self-defence claim. they appealed.
In the afternoon of February 2020, Mr. and Mrs. McMichael grabbed their guns, jumped into his pickup truck, and chased him. Their neighbor Brian joined the chase in his own pickup truck and pulled out his cell phone to record Travis McMichael firing a shotgun at Arbery at close range. Arbery said he didn't have anything other than his running clothes and sneakers.
The video was released months later, sparking anti-racism protests in many US cities. McMichaels and Brian were not arrested after local prosecutors concluded the killings were justified.
Mr. and Mrs. McMichaels spoke of a series of neighborhood break-ins and said they believed Arbery would be viewed as suspicious. .
In a hate crime trial, the McMichaels agreed to plead guilty and their son admitted in court that he chose Arbery because of his "race and color." A judge rejected the plea bargain because it would have forced her to serve 30 years in federal prison before the man was returned to the Georgia prison system. was done.
(Reporting by her Rich McKay of Brunswick, Georgia; additional reporting by Jonathan Allen of New York; editing by Donna Bryson and Howard Goller)
