This time they are sentenced on federal charges:
The three Georgia men serving life in prison for Ahmaud Arbery’s murder were again handed lengthy prison sentences Monday on federal hate crime charges.
Travis McMichael, who fatally shot Arbery, will serve his federal sentence of life plus 10 years. His father, Gregory, who initiated the deadly pursuit of the jogger, will serve life prison plus seven years. Their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, who took a video of the killing, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
They will serve the federal sentences concurrently with the state time. The judge denied each man’s request Monday to serve their sentences in federal prison.
In February, a jury found that the three men, who are white, violated Arbery’s civil rights and targeted him because of his race. Arbery was Black.
Although the men are already serving life sentences, the additional punishments mark “an important moment for the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice and an important moment for the federal judiciary,” said Ayesha Bell Hardaway, an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and co-director of the school’s Social Justice Institute.
Arbery can never be brought back, of course. That pain will remain for all who knew him.
But there is a sort of poetic justice to the fact that the father and son will spend the rest of their lives surrounded by black men whom they would have hunted down in their pickup if they saw them running in their neighborhood.
Assuming either father or son lives very long with the giant targets they have on their backs.
The son already asked to serve his sentence in federal custody because he fears for his life in GenPop in state prison.
Insert sad trombone sound here.
I know. I shouldn’t condone prison violence. And in general I do not.
But given the ages of those good ‘ole white boys, their Ku Klux Klan outlooks on life and non-white people are hard-wired into them by now. They’re not candidates for rehab. The earth would be a better place without them walking on it.
