3 deny ‘hate’ in Arbery’s slaying
Three white Georgia men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man cornered while jogging through their neighborhood, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in a new federal case charging them with hate crimes in the gruesome caught-on-video slaying.
Gregory and Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan, who already face state murder charges, were indicted by a federal grand jury last month following a six-month investigation into Arbery’s Feb. 23, 2020, death. The suspects are accused of using force to intimidate and interfere with Arbery’s right to be on a public street because of his race.
During their first hearing in federal court, the men appeared without lawyers and asked to be represented by public defenders, records show. Prosecutors said they’d share with the defense the equivalent of about “1,300 filing cabinets of records.” The mountain of evidence includes video interviews, jail call recordings and social media data, according to a motion filed Tuesday.
The 25-year-old victim was jogging on a residential road just outside Brunswick when the suspects chased and ambushed him with their cars before Travis McMichael fatally shot him at close range with a shotgun. The suspects told police they were trying to conduct a citizen’s arrest and that they believed Arbery was burglarizing homes.
Arbery was seen on surveillance video going into a home under construction prior to the killing, but there’s been no evidence presented to suggest he stole anything there.
Tuesday’s arraignment comes a day after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill to repeal a Civil War-era law allowing citizens to arrest each other.
“Ahmaud was the victim of a vigilante-style violence that has no place in our country or in our state,” the Republican governor said at a Monday ceremony attended by Arbery’s family.
“Today we are replacing a Civil War-era law ripe for abuse with language that balances the sacred right to self-defense of a person and property with our shared responsibility to root out injustice and set our state on a better path forward,” he said.
The McMichaels and Bryan were charged after Bryan’s cell phone video of the encounter leaked online and sparked accusations of racism. Some critics described the shocking incident as a modern-day lynching.
Authorities allege the trio has a history of racism and targeted Arbery because he was Black. State prosecutors told a Glynn County court last fall that Travis McMichael, 35, used racist slurs at least twice in online communications with a friend. A state investigator also said Bryan, 51, told him after the killing that the shooter used the N-word as he stood next to Arbery’s dead body.
A lawyer for Gregory McMichael, the shooter’s 65-year-old father and a retired police officer, said the case is about self-defense and not race. Lawyers for his son said there’s no basis for the allegations in the federal indictment.
“There is absolutely nothing in the indictment that identifies how this is a federal hate crime and it ignores without apology that Georgia law allows a citizen to detain a person who was committing burglaries until police arrive,” lawyers Bob Rubin and Jason Sheffield said in a statement last month.
The indictment charges the three suspects with hate crimes and attempted kidnapping. The father and son were also charged with using, carrying and brandishing a firearm. The younger McMichael faces an additional count of discharging a firearm during a violent crime.
In a state case set to go to trial in October, the three men are charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.