A federal appeals court has upheld the hate-crime convictions of the three men who chased down and killed Ahmaud Arbery in their Georgia neighborhood.
According to The Associated Press, the court rejected arguments that the trio’s messages and online posts, which appeared to have racist undertones, were insufficient to prove racial motivation.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling Friday, more than a year after hearing arguments from the defendants’ attorneys, who urged the panel to dismiss the hate-crime charges.
They argued the men’s history of racist texts and social media posts failed to establish that Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was targeted because of his race.
Federal prosecutors, however, had used those very messages in the 2022 trial to show the killing was fueled by “pent-up racial anger.” A jury agreed, convicting the men on hate crime and attempted kidnapping charges.
Even if the appellate judges had overturned the federal hate-crime convictions, the three men were unlikely to see any change in their circumstances. All are already serving life sentences in Georgia state prison after being convicted of murder in 2021.
On Feb. 23, 2020, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves and pursued Arbery in their pickup truck after seeing him running through their subdivision outside Brunswick.
A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the pursuit, recording cellphone video showing Travis McMichael firing a shotgun at Arbery at close range.
For more than two months, no one was arrested. That changed after Bryan’s recording leaked online, prompting widespread outrage.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took control of the case from local authorities as Arbery’s death became a rallying point in the national debate over racial injustice. Charges against the three men followed soon after.
A state jury convicted all three of murder in late 2021, and a federal jury delivered the additional hate-crime verdicts in early 2022.
