WASHINGTON: A US jury found three white men guilty of federal hate crimes on Tuesday for the murder of a Black man who was shot dead while jogging in their Georgia neighbourhood two years ago.
Travis McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael and their neighbour William Bryan were convicted of violating the civil rights of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old African-American man.
The McMichaels and Bryan are already serving life sentences after being found guilty in a state trial in November of the February 2020 murder of Arbery.
During the federal hate crimes trial, prosecutors recounted the alleged use by the three men of vulgar racial slurs and a history of racism.
Arbery’s parents, Marcus Arbery and Wanda Cooper-Jones, and Attorney General Merrick Garland welcomed the verdict.
“We got justice for Ahmaud,” Marcus Arbery told reporters.
“We got a victory today,” said Cooper-Jones, “but there’s so many families out there who don’t get victories.”
“I as a mom will never heal,” she added. “It’s been a very long stressful fight.”
Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney who represented the family, said Arbery was “lynched for jogging while Black.”
“I believe this is the first time in the state of Georgia’s history where there has been a conviction for a federal hate crime,” he said.
Garland, at a press conference in Washington, said the Justice Department will “use every resource at its disposal to confront unlawful acts of hate and to hold accountable those who perpetrate them.”
“No one in this country should have to fear the threat of hate-fueled violence,” an emotional Garland said. “No one should fear being attacked or threatened because of what they look like, where they are from, whom they love, or how they worship.”
“And no one should fear that if they go out for a run, they will be targeted and killed because of the colour of their skin.”
Use of racial slurs
The McMichaels and Bryan chased Arbery in their pickup trucks on February 23, 2020, as he jogged through their neighbourhood near the town of Brunswick, Georgia.
Travis McMichael confronted Arbery as he passed by their truck and shot and killed him.
The McMichaels had reached plea deals last month on the hate crimes charges but a judge rejected the deals after Arbery’s relatives objected.
Prosecutors in the state trial of the three men did not dwell on the racial aspects of the murder in making their case.
But Justice Department attorneys in the federal trial made it the focus of their arguments.
Prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein said that if Arbery had been white he would have gone for a jog and “made it home for Sunday supper.”
“They made assumptions about Ahmaud because of the colour of his skin, and it would not have happened if he was white,” Bernstein said.
Bernstein, after apologising to the court, recounted some of the racial slurs used by the younger McMichael in text messages to refer to Black people.
The epithets included “animals,” “monkeys,” “subhuman savages” and the offensive N-word.
The elder McMichael was quoted as having said “Blacks are nothing but trouble” while Bryan used a racial epithet to describe a Black man who was dating his daughter.
The jury hearing the case was made up of eight whites, three Blacks and one Hispanic and deliberated for just a few hours before reaching guilty verdicts.
Travis McMichael, 36, and Gregory McMichael, 66, are serving sentences of life without parole.
Bryan, 52, who had a less direct role in the murder and cooperated with investigators, was given life with the possibility of parole.
The racially-charged case added fuel to nationwide protests over police killings of African Americans sparked initially by the murder in May 2020 of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
