The three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery were found guilty of federal hate crimes on Tuesday for violating Arbery's civil rights and targeting him because he was Black
The three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery were found guilty of federal hate crimes on Tuesday for violating Arbery’s civil rights and targeting him because he was Black.
A predominantly white jury found Travis McMichael, 36; his father, Greg McMichael, 66; and their neighbor William ‘Roddie’ Bryan, 52 guilty on all counts after several hours of deliberations that began on Monday.
The men attempted to chase Arbery and unlawfully confine him using their trucks as he jogged through their neighborhood outside Brunswick, Georgia, in February 2020, the jury concluded, decided the men were guilty of attempted kidnapping.
The McMichaels were also found guilty of using a firearm in the commission of a crime.
The three men are already serving life sentences in prison after being convicted of murder in state court last year. Wednesday will mark two years since Arbery was killed by the men after they chased him through their coastal Georgia neighborhood.
Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said this week that the timing of the close of the federal civil rights trial is ‘great’ as it coincides with the two year anniversary of his death.
‘The anniversary date is the 23rd, and hopefully we’ll have a good verdict by the 23rd,’ she said, according to CNN.
During the trial, prosecutors presented the jury with dozens of text messages and social media posts from Travis McMichael and Bryan, who used racial slurs and frequently made derogatory comments about Black people. The FBI was unable to access Greg McMichael’s phone because it was encrypted.
A federal prosecutor on Monday told jurors the three men treated Arbery as if he were ‘subhuman,’ before they were sent off to deliberate whether the crime was committed because of the color of Arbery’s skin.
‘These defendants didn’t show Ahmaud Arbery the dignity that a dog deserves when it gets hit by a car,’ federal prosecutor Tara Lyons said during closing statements Monday.
‘That’s because these defendants saw Ahmaud as less than human,’ Lyons said.
Attorneys for the defense argued that the men pursued Arbery because they were suspicious of his behavior after hearing of neighborhood thefts — not because of his race.
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