But Arbery’s family vehemently opposed allowing his killers to choose where they will be incarcerated, noting that the young Black man who was gunned down while jogging will never make choices about his life again.
"How can you ask for mercy? You didn’t give my boy no mercy,” Marcus Arbery said as he asked U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood to hand down the “stiffest penalty that the court allows.”
The elder Arbery called his son, who was 25 when he was killed, “the greatest sunshine of my life” and condemned his killers as “devils.”
Godbey Wood sentenced Travis McMichael, 36, to life in prison plus 10 years, and his father, Gregory McMichael, 66, to life in prison plus seven years. They were convicted in federal court in February of attempted kidnapping, a weapons violation and violently interfering with Arbery’s right to use a public street because he was Black.
The federal jury found their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, guilty of attempted kidnapping and violently interfering with Arbery’s right to use a public street because he was Black; he is scheduled to be sentenced later Monday.
The men, all White, already face life sentences on state murder charges following their November 2021 convictions, with no possibility of parole for the McMichaels.
Godbey Wood said the state sentence had custodial priority for the McMichaels, since they were convicted and sentenced in state court before the federal trial. That means the father and son will likely spend the rest of their lives in state prison. They have two weeks to appeal.
In court filings, Gregory McMichael raised safety concerns similar to his son’s in seeking to serve his time in a federal facility, which tend to have better amenities, including healthcare. Bryan has argued he deserves a lesser sentence than his neighbors in part because, unlike them, he was not armed when he pursued Arbery.
Addressing the court on Monday, the elder McMichael apologized to his son, saying he should have “never put him in that situation” of shooting Arbery. He also apologized to his wife and thanked her for standing by him. “You are a better wife than I deserve,” he said.
Speaking to Arbery’s family, the elder McMichael said: “I’m sure that my words mean very little to you, but I want to assure you I never wanted any of this to happen. There was no malice in my heart and my son’s heart today.”
Travis McMichael declined to speak in during his sentencing hearing. In seeking an order that he serve his sentence in federal prison, Copeland, his lawyer, said she understood “the rich irony ... of expressing that my client will face vigilante justice himself.”
Arbery, an avid jogger, was out for a run when the McMichaels and Bryan chased him in pickup trucks and then killed him in Satilla Shores, Ga., on Feb. 23, 2020, in an attack widely described as a “modern-day lynching.” The case drew little national attention until video of the shooting was released that May. It then became part of the broader national debate over racial injustice spurred by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police that same month, and the police killing earlier in the year of Breonna Taylor.
Prosecutors offered a plea deal to the McMichaels before the federal trial: The father and son, who had both denied in their state murder trial that race was a factor in their actions, would have to admit under oath that they killed Arbery because he was Black. In exchange, they would serve 30 years in federal prison.
But the deal fell apart at the last minute in stunning fashion, after Arbery’s family strongly rejected the idea of letting the young man’s killers choose where they would do their time.
“Granting these men their preferred conditions of confinement will defeat me,” Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said in court in January. “It gives them one last chance to spit in my face after murdering my son.”
Arbery’s family tearfully renewed their appeal Monday.
“If they had left him alone that day, they would have been fine. But they tortured him,” Kimberly Arbery, Ahmaud’s aunt, said of her slain nephew. “Give these people what they deserve.”
Another aunt, Ruby Arbery, said Gregory McMichael failed his son by participating in the chasing and killing of Arbery.
“Seems like a generational curse: like father, like son,” she said. “I don’t want them to have an easy life, because we will never have an easy life again. If they could bring Ahmaud back, they could have an easy life. But they chose to take a life, so they don’t deserve an easy life.
Outside the courthouse, Arbery’s supporters gathered for a prayer vigil. Arbery’s family was accompanied by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a longtime civil rights leader, as well as their attorney, Lee Merritt.
Leigh McMichael, Gregory McMichael’s wife, was also photographed at the courthouse.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
Source https://www.globalcourant.com/travis-gregory-mcmichael-sentenced-on-arbery-hate-crime-charges-william-roddie-bryan-next/?feed_id=8361&_unique_id=62f1854217ffa
