(Washington) Ahmaud Arbery’s family on Friday demanded life in prison without the possibility of early release for three white Americans, convicted in November of prosecuting and then shooting the young black jogger in February 2020 in the state of Georgia.
Travis McMichael, 35 and perpetrator of the fatal shots, his father Gregory McMichael, 66, and their neighbor William Bryan, 52, who participated in the chase by filming her, face life imprisonment, but Judge Timothy Walmsley can decide on a possibility of early release after 30 years in prison.
Before the sentencing to the Brunswick court, prosecutor Linda Dunikoski demanded Friday morning that this possibility be offered only to William Bryan.
“We loved our son and we will no longer celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas or his birthday with him,” Marcus Arbery told the judge. “His murderers will spend the rest of their lives thinking about what they did and they should be doing it behind bars,” he added.
The three men “took my son for target because they did not want him in their neighborhood”, assured the mother of Ahmaud Arbery, Wanda Cooper-Jones, asking “the maximum punishment”.
“They are committed to the end in this crime, they must be committed to the end for the consequences,” she said.
“Self-defense always ends badly,” said Me Dunikoski, pointing out that the McMichaels had shown “neither remorse nor empathy”.
Robert Rubin, Travis McMichael’s lawyer, said his client “thought he was doing the right thing, even though it turned out that was not the case.”
“He and Greg McMichael thought they were helping their community,” he added, before the judge adjourned the hearing for lunch.
“Because he was black”
The racial dimension of this case was underlying during the trial which ended on November 24. The McMichaels and their neighbor decided to chase Ahmaud Arbery “because he was black and he was running in the street,” Linda Dunikoski said.
In this state still deeply marked by racism and segregation, the three men had long enjoyed a certain leniency on the part of the authorities: the services of the local prosecutor, for whom Gregory McMichael had long worked, had not carried out any interpellation.
It had taken nearly three months and the release of a video filming the death of the young African-American for the investigation to be handed over to the state police and for the three men to be arrested.
The case had fueled the major anti-racist protests that rocked the country in the summer of 2020, in the wake of the death of another African-American, George Floyd, suffocated under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
On February 23, 2020, the 25-year-old was jogging in Brunswick, a coastal town in southeast Georgia, when he was chased by the three men in their cars.
After an altercation, Travis McMichael opened fire and killed the jogger who was trying to grab his rifle.
The defendants then assured to have taken him for a burglar operating in the surroundings.
Travis McMichael had claimed to have acted in self-defense, and the three men had invoked a law, dating from the Civil War and repealed after the tragedy, allowing ordinary citizens to make arrests.
The three condemned have not finished with justice. They are charged with racist crime at the federal level and will be tried again from February 7.