The three men imprisoned for the execution-style murder of Ahmaud Arbery in rural Georgia in 2020 are now appealing the federal hate crime conviction that has two of them sentenced to life behind bars.
Arbery, 25, was hunted down and shot to death in a barbaric manner during the tortuous and traumatizing spring of 2020 that included a string of other high-profile Black deaths by pseudo-cops and real police officers. Arbery’s life was taken on Feb. 23, 2020, followed by the infamous no-knock shooting death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville on March 13. The campaign of police terror that year peaked with the grotesque, videotaped murder of George Floyd who was choked to death under the knee of former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin on Memorial Day.
The trio of convicted killers — Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael and William Bryan — argue through their attorneys that race did not play a role in the bloodshed in a jogger’s park that fateful day.
“Every crime committed against an African American by a man who has used racist language in the past is not a hate crime,” defense attorney Pete Theodocion said in an appellate brief written on behalf of William Bryan.
That statement, probably considered incredulous and outlandish by urbanites, is included in the 37-page appeal that Theodocion filed on March 3, 2023, but just reached the media’s radar, including NPR.
“The fact that Mr. Arbery was Black was merely a characteristic shared with the person seen on the security footage, a fact of no greater import to Gregory McMichael’s calculus than Mr. Arbery’s biological sex, the shorts he was wearing, his hairstyle, or his tattoos,” added attorney A.J. Balbo, who is representing Gregory McMichael. “Mr. Arbery’s race was only relevant because it matched the race of the man on the home security footage.”
The federal government is scheduled to respond to the appeal within the next 30 days. The son, Travis McMichael, 37, is currently serving life plus 10 years while the father, Gregory McMichael, 67, has been sentenced to life in prison plus seven years. Bryan, 53, was slapped with a 35-year sentence which, at his age, is akin to serving life in prison.
