By RUSS BYNUM
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The white man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery after chasing the 25-year-old Black man in a Georgia neighborhood was sentenced Monday to life in jail for committing a federal hate crime.
Travis McMichael was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood within the port metropolis of Brunswick. His punishment is basically symbolic, as McMichael was sentenced earlier this yr to life with out parole in a Georgia state court docket for Arbery’s homicide.
Wood mentioned McMichael had acquired a good trial.
“And it’s not lost on the court that it was the kind of trial that Ahmaud Arbery did not receive before he was shot and killed,” the decide mentioned.
Before the sentencing, she heard from members of Arbery’s household. His mom, Wanda Cooper-Jones, mentioned she feels each shot that was fired at her son on a regular basis.
“It’s so unfair, so unfair, so unfair that he was killed while he was not even committing a crime,” she mentioned.
McMichael declined to handle the court docket, however his legal professional, Amy Lee Copeland, mentioned her consumer had no convictions earlier than Arbery’s slaying and had served within the U.S. Coast Guard. She mentioned a lighter sentence can be extra according to what equally charged defendants have acquired in different instances, noting that the officer who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, bought 21 years in jail for violating Floyd’s civil rights, although he was not charged with concentrating on Floyd due to his race.
McMichael was one among three defendants convicted in February of federal hate crime expenses. His father, Greg McMichael, and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan had sentencing hearings scheduled later Monday.
The McMichaels armed themselves with weapons and used a pickup truck to chase Arbery after he ran previous their residence on Feb. 23, 2020. Bryan joined the pursuit in his personal truck and recorded cellphone video of McMichael taking pictures Arbery with a shotgun as Arbery threw punches and grabbed on the weapon.
The McMichaels advised police they suspected Arbery was a burglar. Investigators decided he was unarmed and had dedicated no crimes.
Arbery’s killing grew to become half of a bigger nationwide reckoning over racial injustice and killings of unarmed Black individuals together with Floyd and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Those two instances additionally resulted within the Justice Department bringing federal expenses.
“The evidence we presented at trial proved … what so many people felt in their hearts when they watched the video of Ahmaud’s tragic and unnecessary death: This would have never happened if he had been white,” prosecutor Christopher Perras mentioned earlier than Travis McMichael was sentenced.
Greg McMichael and Bryan additionally face doable life sentences after a jury convicted them in February of federal hate crimes, concluding that they violated Arbery’s civil rights and focused him due to his race. All three males had been additionally discovered responsible of tried kidnapping, and the McMichaels face extra penalties for utilizing firearms to commit a violent crime.
A state Superior Court decide imposed life sentences for all three males in January for Arbery’s homicide, with each McMichaels denied any likelihood of parole.
All three defendants have remained jailed in coastal Glynn County, within the custody of U.S. marshals, whereas awaiting sentencing after their federal convictions in January.
Because they had been first charged and convicted of homicide in a state court docket, protocol would have them turned them over to the Georgia Department of Corrections to serve their life phrases in a state jail.
In court docket filings final week, each Travis and Greg McMichael requested the decide to as a substitute divert them to a federal jail, saying they received’t be protected in a Georgia jail system that’s the topic of a U.S. Justice Department investigation centered on violence between inmates.
Copeland mentioned throughout Monday’s listening to for Travis McMichael that her consumer has acquired a whole lot of threats that he might be killed as quickly as he arrives at state jail and that his photograph has been circulated there on unlawful telephones.
“I am concerned your honor that my client effectively faces a back door death penalty,” she mentioned, including that “retribution and revenge” weren’t sentencing components, even for a defendant who’s “publicly reviled.”
Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery Sr., mentioned Travis McMichael had proven his son no mercy and deserved to “rot” in state jail.
“You killed him because he was a Black man and you hate Black people,” he mentioned. “You deserve no mercy.”
Wood mentioned she didn’t have the authority to order the state to relinquish custody of Travis McMichael to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but additionally wasn’t inclined to take action in his case.
During the February hate crimes trial, prosecutors fortified their case that Arbery’s killing was motivated by racism by displaying the jury roughly two dozen textual content messages and social media posts by which Travis McMichael and Bryan used racist slurs and made disparaging feedback about Black individuals.
Defense attorneys for the three males argued the McMichaels and Bryan didn’t pursue Arbery due to his race however acted on an earnest — although inaccurate — suspicion that Arbery had dedicated crimes of their neighborhood.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”