The three white men who killed Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black jogger, after chasing him in pickup trucks through a suburban neighborhood near Brunswick, Georgia, were convicted today of federal "hate crimes." The jury concluded that Gregory McMichael, who initiated the chase; his son, Travis McMichael, who killed Arbery with a shotgun; and William Bryan, who joined the chase in his own pickup truck, had pursued and assaulted Arbery "because of" his "race and color."
That violation of 18 USC 245 is punishable by life in prison. But since all three defendants are already serving life sentences in state prison for murdering Arbery, the federal convictions won't have any practical effect on their punishment. Gregory and Travis McMichael are not eligible for parole, and Bryan won't be eligible until his early 80s, assuming he is still alive. The point of this second trial was to "send the message that the Justice Department won't tolerate this type of racist hatred," as a former federal prosecutor put it in an interview with The Washington Post.
