Already convicted of murder in this case, three white Americans have just been found guilty, Tuesday, February 22, of “racist crime” by a federal jury. Travis McMichael, 36, his father Gregory McMichael, 66, and their neighbor William Bryan, 52, had previously been convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a young black jogger they hunted down and killed.
This first trial, at the end of which they were sentenced to life imprisonment by the justice of the State of Georgia, had only scratched the surface of the racist dimension of the drama, unlike this second federal trial, which put this question at the center of the debate.
Shortly after the verdict was announced, Ahmaud Arbery’s family walked out of court with their hands raised in the air in victory. “We got justice for Ahmaud”his father, Marcus Arbery, told the press. “It has been a long and trying battle”added the mother of Ahmaud Arbery, Wanda Cooper-Jones. “We got a win today, but there are so many families that didn’t.”she recalled.
“No one should fear going out for a run that they will be targeted and killed because of the color of their skin”said Tuesday the American Minister of Justice, Merrick Garland, during a press conference having shown him at times visibly moved. “Ahmaud Arbery should be alive today”he insisted, while “greeting” The verdict. This last “makes it clear that the Department of Justice will continue to use all resources at its disposal to address acts of hate, and hold accountable those who perpetrate them”added Mr. Garland.
Violent racial slurs
During the trial, the prosecution notably listed the particularly violent racist insults uttered by the three men in the past, with the aim of accounting for the state of mind of the defendants when they embarked on the pursuit of Ahmaud Arbery. According to the prosecutor, the son McMichael had, for example, called African Americans “criminals”of “monkeys”, “of savages and sub-humans”.
The deliberations of the jury, made up of eight white people, three black people and one Hispanic, lasted less than a day. Ahmaud Arbery “was lynched for jogging while black”family lawyer Ben Crump, who had also defended the relatives of George Floyd, an African-American who died of asphyxiation during his arrest by white police, told the press on Tuesday.
“I believe this is the first federal conviction of a hate crime in the state of Georgia”, he added. the “hate crime” traditionally designates in the United States an act directed against a targeted person because of certain characteristics of his identity.
Almost two years ago to the day, on February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was jogging in Brunswick, a coastal town in Georgia, when he was chased by the three men, armed and aboard two pickups. After a few minutes of chase, Travis McMichael had shot him.
For more than two months, the police had made no arrests. It took the broadcast of a video of the tragedy, relayed massively on the Internet, for the investigation to begin. Ahmaud Arbery then became an emblem of the Black Lives Matter movement (“black lives matter”) during the major anti-racist demonstrations of 2020.
During their first trial, the three men claimed to have taken the young African-American for an active burglar in the neighborhood and wanted to arrest him. As the federal trial approached, father and son McMichael had reached a plea agreement with prosecutors, admitting for the first time to having harbored racist prejudices.
The family was then fiercely opposed to this agreement, mother Wanda Cooper-Jones recalled on Tuesday, denouncing the decision of the prosecutors. This agreement, which would have allowed the two men to be transferred to a federal prison, was finally invalidated by a judge.