Ahmaud Arbery’s killers ask a US appeals court to overturn their hate crime convictions

[Pelican Press 0]

Ahmaud Arbery’s killers ask a US appeals court to overturn their hate ****** convictions

ATLANTA (AP) — Attorneys are asking a U.S. appeals court to throw out the hate ****** convictions of three white men who used pickup trucks to chase

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through the streets of a Georgia subdivision before one of them ******* the running ****** man with a shotgun.

A panel of judges from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was scheduled to hear ***** arguments Wednesday in a case that followed

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over Arbery’s ******. The white men’s lawyers argue that evidence of past ******* comments they made didn’t prove

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On Feb. 23, 2020, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves with guns and drove in pursuit of Arbery after spotting

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running in their neighborhood outside the port city of Brunswick. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the chase in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael ********* Arbery in the street.

More than two months passed without arrests, until Bryan’s graphic video of the ******** leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. Charges soon followed.

All three men were

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in a Georgia state court in late 2021. After a second trial in early 2022 in federal court, a jury found the trio

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and attempted kidnapping, concluding the men targeted Arbery because he was ******.

In legal briefs filed ahead of their appeals court arguments, lawyers for Greg McMichael and Bryan cited prosecutors’ use of more than two dozen

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, as well as witness testimony, that showed all three men using ******* slurs or otherwise disparaging ****** people.

Bryan’s attorney, Pete Theodocion, said Bryan’s past ******* statements inflamed the trial jury while failing to prove that Arbery was pursued because of his race. Instead, Arbery was chased because the three men mistakenly suspected he was a fleeing *********, according to A.J. Balbo, Greg McMichael’s lawyer.

Greg McMichael initiated the chase when Arbery ran past his home, saying he recognized the young ****** man from security camera videos that in prior months showed him entering a neighboring home under construction. None of the videos showed him stealing, and Arbery was unarmed and had no stolen property when he was *******.

Prosecutors said in written briefs that the trial evidence showed “longstanding hate and prejudice toward ****** people” influenced the defendants’ assumptions that Arbery was committing *******.

In Travis McMichael’s appeal, attorney Amy Lee Copeland didn’t dispute the jury’s finding that he was motivated by racism. The social media evidence included a 2018

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comment Travis McMichael made on a video of ****** man playing a prank on a white person. He used an expletive and a ******* slur after he wrote wrote: “I’d ***** that …. .”

Instead, Copeland based her appeal on legal technicalities. She said that prosecutors ******* to prove the streets of the Satilla Shores subdivision where Arbery was ******* were public roads, as stated in the indictment used to charge the men.

Copeland cited records of a 1958 meeting of Glynn County commissioners in which they rejected taking ownership of the streets from the subdivision’s developer. At the trial, prosecutors relied on service request records and testimony from a county official to show the streets have been maintained by the county government.

Attorneys for the trio also made technical arguments for overturning their attempted kidnapping convictions. Prosecutors said the charge fit because the men used pickup trucks to cut off Arbery’s escape from the neighborhood.

Defense attorneys said the charge was improper because their clients weren’t trying to capture Arbery for ransom or some other benefit, and the trucks weren’t used as an “instrumentality of interstate commerce.” Both are required elements for attempted kidnapping to be a federal ******.

Prosecutors said other federal appellate circuits have ruled that any automobile used in a kidnapping qualifies as an instrument of interstate commerce. And they said the benefit the men sought was “to fulfill their personal desires to carry out vigilante justice.”

The trial judge sentenced both McMichaels

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for their hate ****** convictions, plus additional time — 10 years for Travis McMichael and seven years for his father — for brandishing guns while committing violent *******. Bryan received a lighter hate ****** sentence of 35 years in prison, in part because he wasn’t armed and preserved the cellphone video that became crucial evidence.

All three also got 20 years in prison for attempted kidnapping, but the judge ordered that time to overlap with their hate ****** sentences.

If the U.S. appeals court overturns any of their federal convictions, both McMichaels and Bryan would remain in prison. All three are serving

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for *******, and have motions for new state trials pending before a judge.

___

Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.

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