RIP Ahmaud Arbery.
On Tuesday, February 22nd, the three men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery were also convicted of committing a hate crime in the process of conducting the chase that resulted in the 25-year-old’s death.
As TMZ reports, the group of 12 jurors reached their decision following a week-long trial, during which prosecutors argued that Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Bryan’s “motivation behind the murder was hatred toward Arbery because of his race.”
All three men were hit with “one count of interference of Arbery’s civil rights, plus attempted kidnapping,” and on top of that, each of the McMichaels was charged with “using, carrying and brandishing a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.” Travis, who fired the gun on the road that killed Arbery, received one count of using a firearm in relation to a violent crime.
Following the 2020 shooting, authorities alleged that the acts were racially motivated, which is why the case fell within the boundaries of federal hate crime laws. While in the courtroom, prosecutors shared racist messages they claimed had been posted or exchanged by the defendants, mostly zeroing on Travis specifically, alleging that he once said “Black people [need] to be made examples of in white vs. Black confrontations.”
Sean Rayford/Getty Images
Feds have also reported that Bryan himself told cops he had “heard the McMichaels use a racist epithet to describe Ahmaud after he’d fallen to the ground.” Despite this, the three killers maintained that they aren’t racist and that the chase had no racial motivation, which the jury obviously didn’t believe.
Last month, all three men were handed life sentences – read our report about that here, and check back in with HNHH for any future updates on Ahmaud Arbery’s killers.
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