All 3 defendants found guilty of murdering Ahmaud Arbery

Arbery’s killing became part of a larger national reckoning on racial injustice after the graphic video of his death leaked online two months later.
A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the hate crime convictions of the three men who chased Ahmaud Arbery through their Georgia subdivision with pickup trucks before one of them killed him with a shotgun. Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, had been jogging in the neighborhood.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took well over a year to rule after attorneys for the defendants urged the judges in March 2024 to overturn the case, arguing the men's history of racist text messages and social media posts failed to prove they targeted Arbery because of his race.

Federal prosecutors used those posts and messages in 2022 to persuade a jury that Arbery's killing was motivated by "pent-up racial anger."
Even if the appeals judges had thrown out their hate crime convictions, the trio faced no immediate reprieve from prison. That's because they're also serving life terms for murder after being convicted in a Georgia state court.
Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves and used a pickup truck to pursue 25-year-old Arbery after spotting him running in their neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick on Feb. 23, 2020. A neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, joined the chase and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery at close range.

(By our staff reporter) New York
Picture courtesy: whyy.org