The father and son who were tried for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, have been sentenced to life in prison for the racially-motivated attack where the two white men chased and fatally shot the victim as he jogged through a Georgia neighborhood in 2020.
The two men were sentenced on Monday to federal hate crimes with Travis McMichael and Greg McMichael being denied parole. The third man in the case, William "Roddie" Bryan, who recorded the cellphone video of the killing, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his role in the attack which was also deemed a federal hate crime.
Ahmaud Arbery's Killers
Several months after the three men each were given life sentences for murder in state court, they have all been sentenced for federal hate crimes. U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood scheduled back-to-back hearings to individually sentence all of the defendants.
The first to stand trial was Travis, who fired a shotgun at Arbery after the street chase initiated by his father and joined by Bryan. The Black man's murder, which happened on Feb. 23, 2020, became part of a larger national reckoning over racial injustice and killings of unarmed Black people, as per CBS News.
Other Black individuals who made high-profile headlines include George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. These two cases also resulted in the Justice Department bringing federal charges against the suspects.
In February, a jury convicted the three suspects in Arbery's case of federal hate crimes, concluding that they violated the Black man's civil rights and targeted him because of his race. All three were also found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels face additional penalties for using firearms to commit a violent crime.
According to NBC News, the judge in the case also required that the three suspects serve their sentences in state prison, not federal prison as had been requested by their attorneys. Wood said during Greg's sentencing that as a result of their actions, a young man was dead, all because he was Black.
Federal Hate Crimes
"It is not lost on the court that two men brought guns to that situation that had their worst effect and you weren't one of them," said Wood, adding that however, he was still "deserving of an awfully long sentence."
In a statement, prosecutor Tara Lyons called the sentencing hearings "the end of at least one chapter in an excruciatingly painful journey for Ahmaud Arbery's family, for his community, and for an entire nation that has wept for Ahmaud."
Travis' attorney, Amy Lee Copeland, asked during his sentencing that the judge allow her client to serve his sentence in federal prison. She argued that the request was due to the defendant receiving "hundreds of threats" and would probably be killed in state custody.
An attorney for Greg, A.J. Balbo, told the judge that he was medically "not fit" to serve his sentence in state prison. The sentencing also came after Greg acknowledged Arbery's family in court, apologizing and saying that he never meant any malice that day, CNN reported.
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