Two years after the murder of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery, the three accused white men have been found guilty of hate crimes in the United States. You face life imprisonment. A jury found Tuesday in a Georgia federal court trial that the men violated Arbery’s constitutional rights. The three had pleaded not guilty to the hate crime charge.
The verdict is now “full justice” for the 25-year-old, said Arbery’s father’s lawyer, Ben Crump, outside the courthouse. “We can celebrate this moment.”
A jury had already found the three men guilty in a trial by the US state of Georgia and sentenced them to life imprisonment in January. The shooter Travis M. was then found guilty of murder by the jury. The two co-defendants, Travis M’s father Gregory M. and neighbor William B., were found guilty of, among other things, aggravated assault and manslaughter.
Arbery, 25, was shot and killed while jogging in February 2020 near the city of Brunswick, Georgia. The investigation only really got going when the case attracted national and international attention in the spring through a disturbing cell phone video of the crime. A little later – on May 25, 2020 – the African American George Floyd was killed in a brutal police operation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After that, there were months of protests against racism and police violence in the United States.
During the trial in federal court, prosecutors showed that the defendants had written racist text messages or made racist statements in the past. The defense argued that Arbery was not being hunted for racial reasons, but because the men suspected him of a crime. “It’s been a long and stressful fight, said Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, after the verdict was announced.
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