BRUNSWICK, Ga. ― The three men convicted of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder chased the slain 25-year-old because of “racial assumption, racial resentment and racial anger,” a federal prosecutor told jurors Monday.
In his closing arguments, U.S. Justice Department counsel Christopher Perras asked the jury to convict Travis McMichael, his father Greg McMichael and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan of chasing down Arbery on a public street and killing him because he was a Black man.
“There’s a big difference between being vigilant and being a vigilante,” Perras said, contending the three defendants were the latter. Their actions, he said, were “driven by pent-up racial anger.”
On Feb. 23, 2020, when Greg McMichael saw the unarmed Arbery running past his house, “he grabbed his son and his gun,” Perras said. When Bryan saw Arbery run past his house being chased by the McMichaels, he jumped in his truck under the assumption the Black man was the bad guy and the McMichaels were the good guys, he said.
“They hunted Ahmaud down like an animal,” Perras said. “Then they killed him and left him to bleed in the street like an animal. It was because of their actions, actions driven by a fatal dose of racial resentment and racial anger.”
The McMichaels and Bryan stand indicted of hate crimes and other counts, including attempted kidnapping and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. If convicted, the three men face a possible sentence of life in prison. There is no parole in the federal system.
In November, a state court jury in Brunswick found the McMichaels and Bryan guilty of Arbery’s murder. The McMichaels were sentenced to life in state prison without the possibility of parole; Bryan was sentenced to life with the chance of parole.
The McMichaels set off after Arbery because they “associated Black people with criminality,” Perras said. “They had racial blinders on. ... They didn’t see a fellow human being like themselves. They saw a Black criminal, a sub-human savage.”
Perras recounted to the jury “five terrifying minutes” of the McMichaels and Bryan chasing Arbery through the Satilla Shores neighborhood. He also reminded the jury of the racially incendiary language and text messages the McMichaels and Bryan had made and had been introduced into evidence.
Perras wondered aloud what Arbery had been doing when he stopped in the house under construction that sunny Sunday afternoon. Was he getting a drink of water from one of the two spigots? Was he assessing the progress of the home’s construction? Did he simply go inside “to be alone and to get away from it all?” the prosecutor asked.
“We’ll never know because these three men killed him,” Perras said.
The McMichaels and Bryan decided to pursue the young Black man without any evidence Arbery had done anything wrong, the prosecutor said.
When Arbery was finally cornered between Bryan’s truck and the McMichael’s truck, outside of which Travis stood with his shotgun, Arbery went around the other side of the McMichael’s truck putting it between him and the shotgun, Perras said.
But Travis McMichael “changed the equation” by coming around to confront Arbery, Perras said. Arbery, faced with “a life or death decision,” could have turned his back on McMichael in the hope he wouldn’t pull the trigger.
Instead, he decided “to fight for his life,” Perras said. “You can’t blame him for that.”
After Perras finished, U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood called for a brief recess, after which defense attorneys for the McMichaels and Bryan will give their closing arguments.
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