The white man who fired the shot that killed the 25-year-old Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, has been sentenced to life in prison. Arbery was chased by a three white residents of a neighborhood in Georgia, and Travis McMichael delivered a fatal gun shot. U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood gave the conviction in Brunswick. This sentence was describe by the Associated Press as “largely symbolic” as McMichael has already been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release last year in a Georgia state court for Arbery’s murder. McMichael, according to Judge Wood, was given a fair trial. “And it is not lost on the court that it was the type of trial that Ahmaud Arbery did not have prior to his shooting and killing,” she said, as reported by the Associated Press.
McMichael was one of three defendants convicted of hate crime charges in November 2021 in a state court in Georgia. His father, Greg McMichael, and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were slated for sentence hearings at a later date. On February 23, 2020, the McMichaels armed themselves with pistols and chased Arbery down the street in a pickup vehicle. Bryan joined the chase in his own pickup and captured cellphone footage showing McMichael firing a shotgun at Arbery while he threw punches and grabbed for the weapon. The McMichaels and Bryan claimed that Arbery was a burglar, but the police later identified him a unarmed, and they noted that Arbery had no crime record. Apart from the sentences delivered by the Georgia state court and Brunswick district court, the three has also been found guilty of hate crime and sentenced to a life in prison by a federal court.
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