Murder of Ahmaud Arbery: the three white defendants sentenced to life imprisonment

Wanda Cooper-Jones, Ahmaud Arbery's mother, at the sentence statement.

The jogger's family had called for "maximum punishment".

AP - Stephen B. Morton

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

Three white Americans were sentenced on Friday to life imprisonment in the United States for having prosecuted and then shot dead in February 2020 a young black jogger, Ahmaud Arbery, whom they said they suspected of being a burglar. 

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The case dates back to February 23, 2020. Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old African American, is jogging in Brunswick, Georgia, when he is chased by

Travis and Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor William Bryan

, on board. of their cars.

After an altercation, Travis McMichael opens fire and kills the jogger who was trying to grab his rifle.

He will claim to have acted in self-defense.

For this murder, Travis McMichael, 35, and his father Gregory, 66, were sentenced this Friday to life without the possibility of early release.

William Bryan, 52, who participated in the prosecution by filming it, was sentenced to life in prison with the option of seeking early release after 30 years in prison.

Ahmaud Arbery went out "

to jog and he ended up running for his life

," Judge Timothy Walmsley said as he delivered sentence in Brunswick, a coastal town in the southeastern part of the state. The three men

were convicted of murder

on November 24, after debates marked by the issue of racism and the right to self-defense.

Before the judge, Ahmaud Arbery's family had demanded Friday morning a "

maximum punishment

".

They “

took aim at my son because they didn't want him in their neighborhood

,” said Ahmaud Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones.

The lawyers for the three men pleaded one last time an unintentional act that did not deserve imprisonment until death.

A state still deeply marked by segregation

The defendants had assured to have taken Ahmaud Arbery for a burglar, after seeing him a few days before entering a house under construction.

They also invoked an old law that allows ordinary citizens to arrest a suspect in Georgia.

In this state still deeply marked by racism and segregation, the three men had benefited from the leniency of the services of the local prosecutor, for whom Gregory McMichael had long worked, who had left them free.

It took the video of the young African-American's death in May for the investigation to be handed over to state police and the three men to be arrested.

Ahmaud Arbery's name was chanted in the major anti-racist protests that rocked the country in the summer of 2020, after the death of George Floyd, an African-American killed by a white police officer.

(

With

AFP)

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