Arbery’s killers get life again

Dad-son ‘hate’ sentence

The white father and son who chased down and fatally shot 25-year-old black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia suburb were sentenced to life in prison Monday for committing a federal hate crime.

The federal life sentences for Greg McMichael, 66, and his son Travis McMichael come on top of another set of life sentences handed down by a Georgia state court earlier this year.

Co-defendant William “Roddie” Bryan, who videotaped the killing, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

The three men were convicted on federal hate crime charges in February.

The McMichaels grabbed guns and hopped into their pickup truck to chase Arbery after he ran past their house in Brunswick, Ga., on Feb. 23, 2020.

Bryan, a neighbor of the McMichaels, joined the chase in his own truck, and filmed the subsequent encounter with Arbery on his cellphone — including when the younger McMichael fired a shotgun into the jogger at close range.

Attorneys for the McMichaels argued that the men were attempting to effect a citizens’ arrest, believing Arbery to be responsible for alleged burglaries from a nearby construction site.

Arbery was unarmed. His father called the killing a modern-day lynching.

US District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood said Monday that Travis McMichael had been given a “fair trial,” in contrast to his victim.

“It’s not lost on the court that it was the kind of trial that Ahmaud Arbery did not receive before he was shot and killed,” she said.

“A young man is dead. Ahmaud Arbery will be forever 25. And what happened, a jury found, happened because he’s black,” she added.

Earlier this year, all three defendants were sentenced to life in prison by a Georgia state judge, with only Bryan given the possibility of parole.