Ahmaud Arbery’s Killers Sentenced To Life In Prison

Topline

A Georgia judge on Friday sentenced three white men to life in prison for murdering Ahmaud Arbery, after their vigilante-style killing of the unarmed Black man in 2020 prompted national outrage.

Key Facts

The father-and-son pair of Gregory and Travis McMichael, along with a neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, were all convicted of murder in a November trial.

The McMichaels were both sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Friday, while Bryan was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, meaning he will spend at least 30 years in prison.

The men used pickup trucks to chase down and ram Arbery as he jogged through a suburban Brunswick, Georgia, neighborhood on February 23, 2020, cornering him before Travis McMichael confronted the unarmed 25-year-old with a shotgun and killed him.

Judge Timothy Walmsley suggested the McMichaels showed little remorse for their crimes, but Bryan did show he had “grave concerns that what had occurred should not have occurred.”

Crucial Quote

“These men have chose to lie and attack my son and his surviving family. They each have no remorse and do not deserve any leniency,” Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother, said. “These men deserve the maximum sentence for the crimes.”

Key Background

The fitful investigation and prosecution of Arbery’s murder helped fuel nationwide Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, with Arbery’s killing coming just months before George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis police custody May 25, 2020. The November 2021 trial attracted a great deal of media attention, and civil rights figures like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton were a regular presence in the courtroom. The guilty verdicts in the case were widely praised as a major victory in the fight against racial inequities in the American criminal justice system, with Sharpton saying after the trial ended: “Let the word go forth all over the world that a jury of 11 whites and one Black in the Deep South stood up in the courtroom and said that Black lives do matter.”

Surprising Fact

Arbery’s killing went largely unnoticed until a video of his death, which Bryan shot, was made public on May 5, 2020—72 days after the murder. The McMichaels were arrested two days later and Bryan was taken into custody on May 21, 2020.

Tangent

Defense lawyers unsuccessfully argued the killing was justified under a Civil War-era citizen’s arrest law, since the defense claimed the men thought Arbery was a burglary suspect. Georgia repealed the law last year, which had a history of being used to justify lynchings.

Further Reading

Breaking: All Three Defendants Guilty In Arbery Killing (Forbes)

Defense Attorney In Arbery Trial Slams Presence Of Black Pastors As ‘Public Lynching’ (Forbes)

Guilty Verdicts In Arbery Murder Widely Praised—Mother Says She ‘Never Thought This Day Would Come’ (Forbes)

Georgia Repeals 1863 Law—Once Used To Justify Lynching—In Wake Of Ahmaud Arbery Murder Case (Forbes)