Washington on the 9th of August : Three US white men were convicted of federal hate crimes relating to the murder of African-American Ahmaud Arbery in 2020. As Travis McMichael and his father Greg McMichael were sentenced to life imprisonment, their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan was handed a 35-year sentence in prison.
The three of three were already being held for life for the crime which occurred in Brunswick, Georgia on February 23rd, 2020, as reported by Xinhua news agency.
When he handed out the verdicts on Monday, US District Court Judge for the Southern District of Georgia, Lisa Godbey Wood said: “A young man has died.Ahmaud Arbery will remain 25.And what an appeals court ruled was due to the fact that Arbery is Black.”
A federal jury found the McMichaels and Bryan in February of violating the civil rights of Arbery by slapping Arbery due to the nature of his race.
All three were discovered to be guilty of attempted kidnapping, while the McMichaels were found guilty of making use of guns in the accomplice of an offense that was violent.
In the morning of the incident, McMichaels armed themselves with guns and chased after Arbery in an old pickup truck when he ran by their house.
Bryan was part of the chase in his own vehicle and took a phone recording of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery.
The McMichaels said they believed Arbery of being a burglar, but investigators concluded he was not armed and had committed no crimes.
Greg McMichael addressed the Arbery family on Monday, saying the loss of their loved ones was “beyond description”.
“I’m certain that my words are meaningless to you, but I’d like to assure you that I never intended for anything of this to occur,” he said.
In court, the mother of Arbery Wanda Cooper-Jones responded to his assertion.
“I believe he is aware that he made some bad choices,” she said.”Unfortunately his apology does not bring my son back.”
The verdicts on Monday came just days following the Department of Justice charged four former and present police officers in Louisville, Kentucky for their involvement in the shooting death of an African American woman Breonna Taylor two years ago.
“Breonna Taylor ought to have woken in her home as she does every day in the morning of March 13 in 2020,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said last week.”Tragically, she did not.She was only 26 years old.young.”
The indictments against the officers claim they Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and Sergeant Kyle Meany drafted and approved what they believed was a false affidavit in order to justify a search warrant at Taylor’s residence.
The false declaration set in motion the events that resulted in Taylor’s death after other officers executed the warrant according to Clarke.
The murders of Arbery and Taylor caused racial protests across the US following the murder of the African-American George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2020.
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