A federal jury in Georgia on Tuesday found the three men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery guilty of hate crime charges.
After a day of deliberation, U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood said Tuesday morning that the jury — made up of eight white people, three Black people and one Hispanic person — had come to a conclusion and would read its verdict shortly.
The jury found father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan guilty of all charges.
McMichaels and Bryan chased Arbery, 25, through their coastal Georgia neighborhood in trucks. The three men spotted Arbery running by their homes in February 2020, and cornered him and Travis McMichael fatally shot him with a shotgun.
The McMichaels and Bryan were free for several weeks after the shooting. They were arrested only after the video that Bryan recorded was released and the case was taken over by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
They were convicted of murder and given life sentences in the state trial. The federal hate crime trial centered on the history of the three men and their racial bias, a motive that prosecutors in the state case largely avoided.
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The prosecution spent a week working to establish that Arbery’s murder was driven by the three men’s racial bias and their animus toward Black people.
Witnesses called included an FBI analyst who had combed through the three men’s social media and messaging history, where she found messages, videos and memes that appeared to show that the three men held strong prejudices against Black people.
The defense said the messages and social media posts added to evidence were taken out of context.
Friday was the final day and perhaps the most jarring for the jury, as prosecutors called neighbors and former co-workers of the McMichaels, who all testified that the father and son made troubling racist jokes, rants and statements and were open about their negative feelings toward Black people.
Throughout the case, the defense maintained that the three men may not be likable, may have said troubling things in the past and did not dispute the essential facts of the case. But they insisted that they were not driven by prejudice to kill Arbery.
On Monday, the jury heard closing arguments in which prosecutor Christopher Perras said that the three men were driven by their “pent-up racial anger” and that Travis McMichael “was just looking for a reason” to harm a Black person.
The prosecution also focused on the McMichaels’ operating as vigilantes and their view that they were above the law. At one point in the closing statement, Perras noted that Greg McMichaels did not call police when Arbery ran by; he called his son and picked up his gun.
“There’s a big difference between being vigilant and being a vigilante,” said Perras, later adding: “It’s important for you to understand the full depth of the defendants’ racial hatred.”
The defense asked the jury to keep emotion out of the case.
The McMichaels attempted to plead guilty to the hate crime charges prior to the trial, but the plea agreement was rescinded after Arbery’s parents, Wanda Cooper-Jones and Marcus Arbery, protested that the men would be able serve their time in a federal prison instead of a state one, calling the deal “disrespectful.
“Ahmaud didn’t get the option of a plea,” Cooper-Jones said.
This is a developing story, check back for updates.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
