ATLANTA — The father and son convicted of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder agreed to plead guilty Monday to a federal hate crimes charge that would have avoided a second trial in the Black man’s slaying.
But U.S. District Judge Judge Lisa Godbey Wood rejected a plea agreement that would have seen Travis and Greg McMichael sentenced to 30 years in federal prison after several of Arbery’s family members argued against the deal.
Wood made her decision after Travis McMichael entered a guilty plea. McMichael’s lawyer, Amy Lee Copeland, then got Wood’s permission to have two days to decide whether to continue with the guilty plea or go to trial, set for Monday.
Wood also told attorney A.J. Balbo, who represents Greg McMichael, that he too can take two days before deciding what to do.
If the McMichaels agree to go forward with their guilty pleas, Wood would be able to fashion the punishment she sees fit. As for the 30 years, Wood said, “It could be more. It could be less. It could be that.”
The deal was reached against the wishes of Arbery’s parents, who said they hoped to see the McMichaels spend the rest of their lives in a state penitentiary.
“Ahmaud didn’t get the option of a plea,” his mother Wanda Cooper-Jones said at the hearing. “Ahmaud was hunted down and my son was killed.”
In agreeing to plead guilty to the first count of their federal indictment, the McMichaels would have acknowledged targeting Arbery because he was Black. The indictment accused the father and son arming themselves and chasing Arbery through their neighborhood, yelling at the 25-year-old and using their pickup truck to cut off his route. The men also admitted to trying to kidnap and forcibly detain Arbery, resulting in his death.
In laying out the government’s case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara Lyons noted that when the McMichaels set out on the chase that on Feb. 23, 2020, they got in Travis McMichael’s white pickup truck which had the old Georgia flag displaying the Confederate battle emblem.
She also noted that, during the five-minute chase, Arbery was running with his hands empty and in plain view.
“During the entire chase, Ahmaud Arbery never spoke a word to the defendant or his father,” Lyons said. “He never made a threatening sound or gesture. Rather, he repeatedly tried to run away from the McMichaels.”
Travis McMichael did not belong to any hate groups and did not leave his home that day “to carry out an act of violence against an African American person,” the prosecutor said.
“But he had made assumptions about Ahmaud Arbery that he would not have made if Ahmaud Arbery had been white,” Lyons said.
The prosecutor then said McMichael had, “for years,” through social media posts and in text messages, “associated Black skin with criminality and had harbored resentment toward African American people.” McMichael had also “expressed a desire to see African American people, particularly those he viewed as criminals, harmed or killed,” she said.
Without those factors, Lyons said, “the defendant would not have armed himself and chased down an African America man he only assumed to be a criminal.”
She noted that Greg McMichael, a former Glynn County police officer and investigator with the local district attorney’s office, later told investigators that Arbery was ‘trapped like a rat’ between the two trucks before being shot by Travis.
The McMichaels were convicted of murder in November in a state trial in Brunswick and sentenced on Jan. 7 to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, who joined the chase in his own truck and filmed the cellphone video of Arbery collapsing in the street, was given a life sentence with the possibility of parole in the state trial.
When given a chance to speak, Arbery’s relatives pleaded with Wood to reject the plea agreement.
Referring to Travis McMichael’s testimony at the state court trial, Cooper-Jones said she’d heard enough.
“I carried every word he had to say to the Thanksgiving table,” Cooper-Jones said. “His words followed me through the Christmas holiday, the second Christmas I’ve spent without my son. His smug, detached testimony echoed in my head through the new year. Believe me, I’ve heard enough from these men.”
Cooper-Jones said the McMichaels should stand trial in federal court and be convicted of all charges.
“It is not fair to take away the victory that I’ve prayed and I’ve fought for,” she said. “It is not right and it is not just. It is wrong. Please listen to me. .... Granting these men their preferred conditions of confinement will defeat me. It gives them one last chance to spit in my face after murdering my son.”
Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery, agreed.
“They killed my son because he was a Black man,” he said.
Then, referring to Travis McMichael, Arbery said, “This man here hated Black people so much he didn’t want to be around them. … What’s that for? Black people aren’t going nowhere. We’re going to be here. God created us to be here on this earth. So the world can do without you.”
After the emotional pleas from Arbery’s family, Lyons told the judge that the Justice Department turned down a plea deal at the wishes of the family. But two weeks ago, Lyons said, lawyers for the Arbery family told federal prosecutors the family would accept a plea deal.
Lyons acknowledged that was not accurate and added, “I’m not up here blaming the family, your honor.”
Atlanta criminal defense attorney Jack Martin, who has followed the case, said most people would prefer to be in federal custody than in state custody.
“That’s especially true for police officers or former police officers who could be more vulnerable to being attacked in state custody,” he said. “Federal custody can give them a little more protection. I assume that’s what they’re thinking.”
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