By SudOuest.fr with AFP
Ahmaud Arbery went out “to jog and he ended up running for his life,” Judge Timothy Walmsley said as he delivered sentence in Brunswick, a coastal town in the southeastern part of the state.
Three white Americans were sentenced to life in prison on Friday for pursuing and then shooting a young black jogger, Ahmaud Arbery, who they said they suspected was a burglar in February 2020 in Georgia, in the southern United States. .
Travis McMichael, 35 and perpetrator of the fatal shots, and his father Gregory McMichael, 66, were given life sentences without the possibility of early release. Their neighbor William Bryan, 52, who participated in the prosecution by filming it, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of requesting early release after 30 years in prison.
The three men were convicted of murder on November 24, after debates marked by the issue of racism and the right to self-defense.
A relieved family
The family, who had called for “maximum punishment” on Friday morning, welcomed these heavy penalties. “I knew we would come out of court with a victory, I never doubted,” said her mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones.
This verdict “was very important” for the “responsibility” to be assumed, added one of the lawyers for the family, Lee Merritt. “It was important for the family to see these men being put in prison. “
“Self-defense always ends badly,” for her part said at the hearing prosecutor Linda Dunikoski, saying that the McMichaels had shown “neither remorse nor empathy”.
She thus revealed that Gregory McMichael had transmitted the images of the murder to the media “because he thought it would exonerate him”.
Only the video …
On February 23, 2020, the 25-year-old was jogging in Brunswick when he was chased by the three men in their cars. After an altercation, Travis McMichael opened fire and killed the jogger who was trying to grab his rifle. He claimed to have acted in self-defense.
“A black man should be able to jog without fearing for his life,” Democratic President Joe Biden tweeted on the anniversary of the murder, marked by several commemorations.
The defendants had assured to have taken Ahmaud Arbery for a burglar, after seeing him a few days before entering a house under construction. They also invoked an old law that allows ordinary citizens to arrest a suspect in Georgia. In this state still deeply marked by racism and segregation, the three men had benefited from the leniency of the services of the local prosecutor, for whom Gregory McMichael had long worked, who had left them free.
It took the video of the young African-American’s death in May for the investigation to be handed over to state police and the three men to be arrested. Ahmaud Arbery’s name was chanted in the major anti-racist protests that rocked the country in the summer of 2020, after the death of George Floyd, an African-American killed by a white police officer.