ATLANTA – A federal judge on Monday handed down another life sentence to Travis McMichael, one of three white Georgia men convicted of a federal hate crime for the February 2020 stalking and killing of Ahmaud Arberry, an unarmed black man.
And in an equally dramatic move, U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godby Wood rejected a request by Mr. McMichael — who had previously been sentenced to life in prison for his state murder conviction — to be allowed to serve the first few years of the concurrent life sentences in federal prison.
His lawyer said Mr. McMichael had received hundreds of death threats and argued in court that her client would be safer in the federal system and less likely to be subject to “vigilante justice.”
But a number of Mr Arbury’s family members came to court and argued that Mr McMichael and the other two men convicted of the murder should not be given special treatment. Marcus Arberry, Mr Arberry’s father, said he wanted the men to “rot in state prison”.
“Those three devils broke my heart to pieces,” he said.
The sentencing hearing for Mr. McMichael, 36, in a courtroom in Brunswick, Ga., is the first of three hearings scheduled for Monday for the men whose actions, captured on video, horrified the nation and the world. Prosecutors argued that Mr. Arbury’s killing was the men’s own version of racially motivated vigilante justice. The second man – Mr. McMichael’s father, Greg McMichael, 66 – is due to be sentenced at 1 p.m. ET, and the third man who pursued Mr. Arbury, William Bryan, has a hearing at 3 p.m.
Mr. McMichael shot Mr. Arbury at close range with a shotgun after a chase that lasted several minutes Sunday afternoon in Satilla Shores, a suburban neighborhood just outside Brunswick. The three white men gave chase in a pair of pick-up trucks as Mr Arbury tried desperately to outrun them.
Moments earlier, Mr Arbury had been at a house under construction and the men who killed him said they suspected him of a series of property crimes. Relatives of Mr Arbury said Mr Arbury, a keen runner, had been out for a Sunday jog. At trial, it was proven that all three defendants harbored racial animosity toward blacks.
Mr McMichael declined to speak in court on Monday. The judge said she had thought long and hard about his sentence. At one point, she referred to the February 2022 federal trial she presided over in which all three men were found guilty of a hate crime.
It was a fair trial, she said – “the kind of trial Ahmaud Arbery didn’t get before he was shot and killed.”
In addition to the life sentence for the hate crime “interference with rights,” the judge sentenced Mr. McMichael to 20 years, to be served concurrently, for the attempted kidnapping and 10 years, to be served consecutively, for the federal weapons charge.
These sentences are likely to have little practical effect because Mr. McMichael is already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for a state murder conviction. The more pressing issue for Mr. McMichael was where he would serve his sentence.
In a court filing last week, his attorney, Amy Lee Copeland, described the threats he received.
“Hundreds of threats,” she wrote. “He stopped counting in January 2022 when he had about 800 threats. The threats included statements that his image had been circulated throughout the state prison system on contraband cell phones, that people were “waiting” for him, that he should not enter the yard, and that correctional officers had promised to be available (whether for a fee or free of charge). to keep certain doors unlocked and his back turned to allow the inmates to hurt him.
Ms. Copeland noted that the Justice Department’s civil rights division is conducting an investigation into unsafe conditions in the Georgia prison system, exacerbated by staff shortages, training problems and other factors. Ms. Copeland cited an analysis by Georgia Public Radio that found 53 homicides in Georgia state prisons in 2020 and 2021.
Mr. McMichael, Greg McMichael and Mr. Bryan are currently being held at a local jail, the Glynn County Detention Center, where they have been since their arrest in May 2020.
In her court filing, Ms. Copeland said that Mr. McMichael would “ideally” be placed in federal prison “for the duration of his concurrent federal sentence” but “at a minimum” should be placed in federal prison through the appealed trial in his federal case.
In court, however, Ms. Copeland asked only that Mr. McMichael be placed in the federal system through the appeals process, allowing what she called a “cooling off” period that could help ensure his safety.
Ms Copeland said she realized the “rich irony” of being concerned about her client being a victim of justice. But she said if he were sent to a state prison in Georgia, he would “effectively be facing a behind-the-scenes death sentence.”
Prosecutors opposed allowing Mr. McMichael to go to federal prison first, noting that convicts usually serve their sentences first in the prison system of the government entity that first prosecuted them — in this case, the state of Georgia.
In the end, Judge Wood said he had “neither the power nor the desire” to send Travis McMichael to federal prison first.
A judge sentenced Greg McMichael in January to life in prison without parole for the state murder charge he faced. Mr. Bryan was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
The two men now face possible federal life sentences for their hate crime convictions.
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