A jury has convicted three White men from Georgia guilty on Tuesday for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, on charges of federal hate crime.
It was deemed that the three suspects were motivated by racism when they chased down 25-year-old Arbery through their neighborhood in their truck. The Black man's case was one of the most high-profile hate crime trials in years.
Convicted of Federal Hate Crimes
The murder of the victim came after a series of acts of violence against African-Americans, including George Floyd, whose death under the knee of former police officer Derek Chauvin sparked international protests. The recent conviction is seen as a victory for the Justice Department had committed to making such hate crimes a priority.
While many legal analysts argued that such hate crimes are particularly difficult to prove in court, Georgia federal prosecutors were able to win the case by presenting voluminous evidence of the defendants' racist beliefs and crude language. The situation left jurors visibly shaken and prompted hours-long deliberation to reach a verdict, as per the New York Times.
The jury that convicted the three White men was composed of eight White individuals, three Black individuals, and one Hispanic person. The jury also ruled that the suspects were convicted of attempted kidnapping and the McMichaels, a father and son duo, were guilty of using a firearm during the commission of a crime.
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Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, who was outside the courthouse, thanked the jury for the convictions of her son's killers. She said that the decision gave her family a "sense of a small victory." However, she argued that as a family, they would never get the victory because her son was gone forever.
According to CBS News, the three White men shot and killed Arbery in February 2020 in Brunswick, Georgia, an incident that was captured on video by the McMichaels' neighbor, who was the third man in the case. The Black man was jogging along with the neighborhood when the father and son duo cornered him with their pickup truck before shooting him with a shotgun.
Racially-Motivated Crime
Prosecutor Christopher Perras argued that the McMichaels and their neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, acted out of "pent-up racial anger. On the other hand, lawyers for the suspects said that the defendants recognized Arbery as he ran by their home as the man captured on surveillance footage relating to at least five instances of potential crimes.
Previously, the McMichaels were both sentenced to life in prison without parole while their neighbor, Bryan, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 30 years. The three men were charged separately by the Justice Department in federal court with hate crimes. The agency alleged that the suspects violated Arbery's civil rights.
During the trials, prosecutors cited the suspects' racist text messages and social media posts to argue that the murder of Arbery was motivated by his race. In a Facebook video of a Black man playing a prank on a White individual in 2018, Travis McMichael commented, "I'd kill the f****ng n****r," Fox News reported.
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