প্রকাশ: 08/01/2022
A Georgia judge sentenced Travis McMichael and his father
Gregory McMichael on Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole
for what he called the "chilling" 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a
black man running through their mostly white neighbourhood in the southern US
state.
Judge Timothy Walmsley also gave a life sentence to their
neighbour William "Roddie" Bryan but ruled that he could seek parole
after 30 years in prison, the minimum sentence allowed for murder under Georgia
law.
Echoing comments made by Arbery's anguished relatives
earlier in the hearing at Glynn County Superior Court, the judge condemned the
three men for what he described as their mistake of failing to see Arbery as
just another neighbour.
He said he gave the McMichaels the harshest sentence
available in part because of their "callous" words and actions
captured on a cellphone video that sparked national outrage when it became
public in the summer of 2020.
"It was a chilling, truly disturbing scene," the
judge said of the frame in the video where McMichael begins to lift his shotgun
at Arbery while the 25-year-old is about 20 feet away. "I kept coming back
to the terror that must have been in the mind of the young man running through
Satilla Shores."
In November, a jury found Gregory McMichael, 66, his son
Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbour Bryan, 52, guilty of murder,
aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal intent to commit a felony.
The judge agreed with prosecutors and Arbery's relatives
that the three men, who are white, had "assumed the worst" about
Arbery, who he said was "hunted down and shot, and he was killed because
individuals here in this courtroom took the law into their own hands."
Earlier, Arbery's family told the court they believed that
racial stereotyping led to the killing of the avid jogger, who grew up and
still lived across the highway from the Satilla Shores neighbourhood where he
died. Defence lawyers had pleaded leniency, saying none of the three men ever
intended for Arbery to be killed, and that the maximum punishment should be
reserved only for the "worst of the worst" offenders.
Before the judge's ruling, Jasmine Arbery addressed the
court in a quavering voice to offer a poetic celebration of her younger brother's
blackness, which she said was mistaken for something frightening by his
attackers.
The judge agreed with prosecutors and Arbery's relatives
that the three men, who are white, had "assumed the worst" about
Arbery, who he said was "hunted down and shot, and he was killed because
individuals here in this courtroom took the law into their own hands."
Earlier, Arbery's family told the court they believed that
racial stereotyping led to the killing of the avid jogger, who grew up and
still lived across the highway from the Satilla Shores neighbourhood where he
died. Defence lawyers had pleaded leniency, saying none of the three men ever
intended for Arbery to be killed, and that the maximum punishment should be
reserved only for the "worst of the worst" offenders.
Before the judge's ruling, Jasmine Arbery addressed the
court in a quavering voice to offer a poetic celebration of her younger
brother's blackness, which she said was mistaken for something frightening by
his attackers.
Defence lawyer Kevin Gough had argued for leniency for Bryan
because he was the only one of the three who was unarmed when he pursued
Arbery.
Attorneys for the three men have said they will appeal the
convictions. The men also face a federal trial in February on hate-crime charges,
accused of violating Arbery's civil rights by attacking him because of his
"race and colour."
The state case hinged on whether the defendants, under a
now-repealed Georgia law permitting citizen arrests, had a right to confront
Arbery on a hunch he was fleeing after committing a crime. In the end, the jury
was not swayed by tearful testimony from Travis McMichael, the only defendant
to take the stand, that he shot only in self-defence.
Arbery was jogging through the leafy Satilla Shores
neighbourhood on the afternoon of February 23 when the McMichaels decided to
grab their guns, jump in a pickup truck and give chase.
Bryan joined the chase in his own pickup truck after it
passed his driveway, and pulled out his cellphone to record Travis McMichael
firing a shotgun at Arbery at close range. Arbery had nothing on him besides
his running clothes and sneakers.
The video fuelled national protests against racism in the
criminal justice system when it emerged months later and it became clear that
none of the men involved had yet been arrested after a local prosecutor
concluded the killing was justified.
"They chose to target my son because they didn't want
him in their community," Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery's mother, told the
court on Friday. "When they couldn't sufficiently scare him or intimidate
him, they killed him."
In his sentencing, the judge quoted the mother's remarks,
saying they struck him as "very true."
"At a minimum, Ahmaud Arbery should force us to consider
expanding our definition of what a neighbour may be and how we treat
them," the judge said.
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