As we look back on the death of Ahmaud Arbery, we are reminded of a vile murder that ruptured the faith of millions of Black Americans already weary from a history of racial injustice.
Arbery was shot to death on Feb. 23, 2020, after being racially profiled and followed by three white men in a South Georgia neighborhood.
Cellphone video showing two of those men armed in a truck and chasing down 25-year-old Arbery as he was jogging through the Satilla Shores subdivision just outside of Brunswick darkly resembled images of racial violence during the Jim Crow era, causing many to rethink where exactly race relations stand in America and demonstrating that the country isn’t very far from a time many thought was long past.
The heinous nature of Arbery’s murder drew fierce calls for justice from across the country, which was served more than a year after his death when a jury found Arbery’s killers guilty of murder alongside a slew of other charges.
Now, Greg and Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan will spend the rest of their lives in prison with no chance of parole.
All three were also found guilty and later sentenced for committing federal hate crimes, but now they’re currently working to get a judge to toss those convictions. Oral arguments are set to begin for those appeals on March 27 in a federal court in Atlanta.
Attorneys for Greg McMichael and Bryan argued that race wasn’t a factor in their pursuit of Arbery. Rather, they chased him because they really believed he was in the process of committing a crime.
The court filing for Travis McMichael’s appeal contests that prosecutors ultimately failed to prove that Arbery was killed on a public street, as stated in their indictment. One of the federal hate crimes he was convicted of was “using violence to intimidate and interfere with Arbery because of his race and because he was using a public street,” according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Prosecutors…
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