(CBS News) — Two of the three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through a Georgia neighborhood in early 2020 were sentenced to life in prison Monday for federal hate crimes. Travis McMichael, the man responsible for fatally shooting Arbery, and his father, Greg McMichael, had already been sentenced to life in prison without parole for their roles in the killing during a state trial in Georgia.
Months after the McMichaels and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, each received life sentences for murder in state court, all three men convicted in Arbery’s murder faced a second round of criminal penalties Monday for federal hate crimes committed in the deadly pursuit of the 25-year-old Black man. Bryan’s sentencing is scheduled to come later on Monday.
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U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood scheduled back-to-back hearings to individually sentence each of the defendants, starting with Travis McMichael, who fired a shotgun at Arbery after the street chase initiated by his father and joined by Bryan.
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Arbery’s killing on Feb. 23, 2020, became part of a larger national reckoning over racial injustice and killings of unarmed Black people including George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Those two cases also resulted in the Justice Department bringing federal charges.
When the court hearings resume in Georgia on Monday, Bryan faces a possible life sentence as well, after a jury convicted him along with the McMichaels in February of federal hate crimes, concluding that they violated Arbery’s civil rights and targeted him because of his race. All three men were also found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels face additional penalties for using firearms to commit a violent crime.
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