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The three white men who murdered a young black man who played sports after chasing him with their trucks in Georgia have been sentenced this Friday to life imprisonment, in a case that exposed judicial tension in lawsuits for racial issues in the United States.
Travis McMichael, 35 years old and who shot in February 2020 at Ahmaud Arbery, of 25; his father Gregory McMichael, a 66-year-old retired police officer, and his neighbor William ‘Roddie’ BryanOut of 52, they had previously been convicted of multiple counts of murder, armed robbery and illegal detention in November. Only Bryan will have the option to be released before the end of his sentence; the other two will not be able to get out of prison in their lives, according to the sentences released this Friday.
Before the Brunswick court issued the sentences, prosecutor Linda Dunikoski asked Friday morning that the possibility of early release be considered only for William Bryan. Arbery’s parents asked for the maximum penalty, reports Afp.
“We love our son and we will no longer celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas or his birthday with him,” Marcus Arbery told the judge. “His killers will spend the rest of their lives thinking about what they did and should do behind bars,” he added.
The three men “targeted my son because they didn’t want him in their neighborhood,” said the mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, asking for “the maximum penalty” for them.
“Self-defense always ends badly,” prosecutor Dunikoski stressed, noting that the McMichaels had not shown “remorse or empathy.”
Robert Rubin, an attorney for Travis McMichael, said his client “thought he was doing the right thing, but he wasn’t.”
“He and Greg McMichael thought they were helping their community,” he added, before the judge adjourned the hearing for lunch.
At the trial they saw videos in which the armed men chased Arbery as he ran through the neighborhood because they suspected, without evidence, that he was a thief.
The videos, shot by Bryan, show Arbery trying to avoid them and then Travis McMichael shooting him with a shotgun.
Evidence concealment
Local police initially kept the video a secret, and it took months for the McMichaels and Bryan to be arrested, which came after the footage leaked online, sparking a wave of national outrage.
A local prosecutor, Jackie Johnson, has been charged with violating her oath and having hindered investigation about Arbery’s death.
During the trial, the defendants said they suspected Arbery of being a thief and invoked a state law since repealed that allowed citizens to make arrests.
But prosecutors said there was no justification for trying to arrest Arbery and that they never told him they wanted to arrest him while playing sports in the Satilla Shores neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon.
Arbery “was trying to get away from these strangers who were yelling at him, threatening to kill him,” lead prosecutor Linda Dunikoski told the court. And then they killed him. “This is not the Wild West,” he added.
Ben Crump, a lawyer for Arbery’s father, called the three men a “lynch mob.”
After the verdict was read, on Nov. 24, Georgia Governor Republican Brian Kemp claimed that Arbery was “the victim of a street surveillance that is out of place in Georgia” and called for “healing and reconciliation.”
Men could have been sentenced to death penalty for murder, but prosecutors made it clear before trial that they would not seek such a penalty, possibly making it easier for the mostly white jury to agree on a verdict relatively quickly, after less than 12 hours of deliberation.
President Joe Biden He said in November that Arbery’s murder “is a devastating reminder of how far one has to go in the fight for racial justice in this country.”
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism