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A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the hate crime convictions of three white men who stalked Ahmaud Arbery. Georgia subdivision with pickup trucks, before one of them shot and killed the fleeing black man with a shotgun.
It took more than a year for a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a verdict in March 2024 after attorneys for the defendants urged the judges to overturn the case, arguing that the men’s history of racist text messages and social media posts failed to prove that they targeted Arbery because of her race.
Federal prosecutors used those posts and messages to convince a jury in 2022 that Arbery’s murder was motivated by “repressed racial anger.”
Even though appeals judges threw out their hate-crime convictions, the three did not receive immediate relief from prison. This is because he is also serving a life sentence for murder after being convicted in a Georgia state court.
Father and son Greg and travis mcmichael They armed themselves and used a pickup truck to drive Arbery, 25, after they saw him fleeing his neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick on February 23, 2020.
More than two months passed without any arrests, until a graphic video of Brian’s murder was leaked online. Georgia Bureau of Investigation Local police took over the case as the outrage over Arbery’s death became part of a national outcry over racial injustice. Charges were soon leveled.
All three men were convicted of murder by a state court in late 2021. Following a second trial in U.S. District Court in early 2022, a jury found all three guilty of hate crimes and attempted kidnapping.
Greg McMichael’s attorney, AJ Balbo, declined to comment on the appellate ruling. Attorneys for Brian and Travis McMichael did not immediately respond to phone and email messages.