Father and son convicted in Ahmaud Arbery killing get life in prison for federal hate crime charges

Two of the three White men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia neighborhood in 2020 were sentenced Monday to life in prison for committing federal hate crimes – just months after the three defendants received life in prison for state murder charges.

Travis McMichael, who killed Arbery with a shotgun after the street chase initiated by his father and joined by a neighbor, was the first of the three defendants to be sentenced on Monday, when he was ordered to spend life in prison. His father, Gregory McMichael, who initiated the neighborhood chase that ended with the Arbery’s death, was later sentenced to life in prison for committing a federal hate crime.

U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood scheduled back-to-back hearings to individually sentence each of the defendants. The third defendant, 52-year-old William “Roddie” Bryan, was sentenced later on Monday to 35 years in prison for recording cellphone video of the slaying.

Arbery’s killing on Feb. 23, 2020, became part of a larger national reckoning over racial injustice and killings of unarmed Black people including George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Those two cases also resulted in the Justice Department bringing federal charges.

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The McMichaels and Bryan faced possible life sentences after a jury convicted them in February of federal hate crimes, concluding that they violated Arbery’s civil rights and targeted him because of his race. All three men were also found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels face additional penalties for using firearms to commit a violent crime.

A state Superior Court judge imposed life sentences for all three men in January for Arbery’s murder, with both McMichaels denied any chance of parole. Federal life sentences “give you a backstop in the event that an appellate court decides there was some kind of error in the course of the state trial,” said Michael Moore, an Atlanta lawyer and former U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Georgia.

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All three defendants have remained jailed in coastal Glynn County, in the custody of U.S. marshals, while awaiting sentencing after their federal convictions in January.

Because they were first charged and convicted of murder in a state court, protocol would have them turned over to the Georgia Department of Corrections to serve their life terms in a state prison.

In court filings last week, both Travis and Greg McMichael asked the judge to instead divert them to a federal prison, saying they won’t be safe in a Georgia prison system that’s the subject of a U.S. Justice Department investigation focused on violence between inmates. 

The McMichaels armed themselves with guns and jumped in a truck to chase Arbery after spotting him running past their home outside the port city of Brunswick on Feb. 23, 2020. Bryan joined the pursuit in his own truck, helping cut off Arbery’s escape. 

He also recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery at close range as Arbery threw punches and grabbed at the shotgun.

MEN FOUND GUILTY IN ARBERY MURDER WILL GO TO FEDERAL COURT ON HATE CRIME CHARGES

The McMichaels told police they suspected Arbery had been stealing from a nearby house under construction. But authorities later concluded he was unarmed and had committed no crimes. Arbery’s family has long insisted he was merely out jogging.

The McMichaels and Bryan were arrested after the graphic video of the shooting leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police.

During the February hate crimes trial, prosecutors fortified their case that Arbery’s killing was motivated by racism by showing the jury roughly two dozen text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and Bryan used racist slurs and made disparaging comments about Black people. A woman testified to hearing an angry rant from Greg McMichael in 2015 in which he said: “All those Blacks are nothing but trouble.”

Defense attorneys for the three men argued the McMichaels and Bryan didn’t pursue Arbery because of his race but acted on an earnest — though erroneous — suspicion that Arbery had committed crimes in their neighborhood.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.