ATLANTA — A judge Friday sentenced two white men to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man whose 2020 killing helped push a national debate on racial profiling and vigilantism. A third man also convicted of murdering Arbery was sentenced to life, but with the possibility of parole.
Gregory McMichael, 66, and his son Travis McMichael, 35, were sentenced for their role in chasing Arbery with their pickup trucks in the suburban community near Brunswick, Georgia, and killing him. Travis McMichael fatally shot Arbery, who was unarmed. Their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, was sentenced to life in prison but will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years.
The three men were found guilty the day before Thanksgiving by a mostly white jury, prompting family and friends to claim that justice had, finally, been served. The case, many civil rights activists said, represented a landmark victory against racism in the criminal justice system.
On Friday morning, before the judge set punishments for the three defendants, Arbery’s family spoke inside the Glynn County Courthouse of their loss and urged the judge to impose maximum sentences.
“These men have chose to lie and attack my son and his surviving family, they each have no remorse and do not deserve any leniency,” Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother, said in her victim impact statement. “They chose to treat him differently than other people who frequently visited their community and when they couldn’t sufficiently scare him or intimidate him, they killed him.”
Defense attorneys, in turn, called for leniency.
Robert Rubin, an attorney for Travis McMichael, said his client’s fatal shooting of Arbery as Arbery approached him and grabbed the gun might have been reckless, but was “not evidence of a soul so blackened as to deserve to spend the rest of his life in prison.”
The McMichaels and Bryan chased down Arbery in pickup trucks on Feb. 23, 2020 — a quiet Sunday afternoon — as he ran through the Satilla Shores subdivision near the coastal port city of Brunswick.
The men later said they were attempting to make a citizen’s arrest when they pursued Arbery. Travis McMichael testified that he was acting in self-defense, because he fired only after Arbery, in his final moments, had lunged for him and his gun.
Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty against the three defendants. Under Georgia law, murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
