Ahmaud Arbery Killers Attempt to Get Conviction Overturned

by Fulton Watch News Feed
Attorneys are asking a U.S. appeals court to throw out the hate crime convictions of three White men who used pickup trucks to chase Ahmaud Arbery through the streets of a Georgia subdivision before one of them killed the running Black man with a shotgun. In January 2022 Travis McMichael, his father Greg McMichael and William Bryan were found guilty of federal hate crimes for violating the civil rights of Ahmaud Arbery. Gregory McMichael, 66, and his son Travis McMichael, 36, were sentenced to life in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood for essentially executing vigilante justice and ultimately kidnapping and killing Arbery. who was jogging through the tight-knit enclave.

On top of their life sentences, Travis McMichael, who took the fatal shot against Arbery, was sentenced to an additional 10 years, and Wood gave Gregory an additional seven years. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan also received a 420-month sentence for federal hate crime. The trio of killers was sentenced to life sentences in a Georgia State Court in January of 2022 for killing the young black man.

The attorneys for the three convicted men are arguing that evidence of past racist comments they made didn’t prove
a racist intent to harm. Travis McMichael’s attorney is also claiming that the case should be overturned on a technicality in that the prosecuting attorneys did claimed that Arbery was killed on a public street. Instead, Copeland contends that the prosecution failed to prove the streets of the Satilla Shores subdivision where Arbery was killed were public roads, as stated in the indictment used to charge the men. 

An earlier request from Travis McMichaels’ that he serve his sentence in federal prison as he told the court through his attorney that he fears for his life, was also denied and he will spend the rest of his life in a Georgia state prison.

U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood denied McMichael’s motion to overturn the…

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