BRANSWICK, GA (AP) – On Tuesday, prosecutors were due to begin summoning witnesses in a federal trial for hate crimes against three white people convicted of killing Ahmaud Arberi.
On the first day of trial in the port city of Brunswick on Monday, prosecutors told jurors they had evidence that each of the defendants had a history of racist remarks. To get a verdict on a hate crime, they must prove to a jury that Arbery was persecuted and fatally shot because he is black.
In their introductory remarks, lawyers called their clients’ use of racist insults insulting and vulnerable. But they insisted that their deadly pursuit of Arbury was motivated by a serious, albeit erroneous, suspicion that the 25-year-old black man had committed crimes – not racial hatred.
Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves and used a pickup truck to chase Arbury after spotting him fleeing his Georgia coastal area on February 23, 2020. A neighbor, William “Roddy” Brian, joined the chase in his truck and recorded on his cell phone a video in which Travis McMichael blew up Arbury with a shotgun.
There were no arrests until the video appeared online two months later.
Both McMichaels and Brian were convicted of murder last fall in a Georgian state court and sentenced to life imprisonment.
All three are now on trial in a separate case in U.S. District Court, where they are accused of violating Arbery’s civil rights and assaulting him because he was black. They pleaded not guilty.
On Monday, a jury of eight white members, three blacks and one Hispanic took the oath to stand trial.
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