We should’ve seen this day coming: when the three white men serving prison time in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery seek to overturn their hate crime convictions by insisting the killing wasn’t racially motivated.
In 2020, Greg McMichael and his son, Travis, chased down Arbery as he jogged through a neighborhood in Brunswick, Ga. Neighborhood resident William Bryan joined them in his own vehicle and recorded the moment Travis hopped out of his car and fatally shot Arbery at close range. The goons told the police they assumed Arbery was looting a nearby home that was under construction.
Now, why would they assume this Black man minding his business was a criminal? You guessed it: racism. However, CBS News reports the trio is looking to dispute that claim in an appeal to overturn their hate crime convictions.
Except prosecutors brought a lot of evidence suggesting the men were aggressively anti-Black.
Read more from CBS News:
In legal briefs filed ahead of their appeals court arguments, lawyers for Greg McMichael and Bryan cited prosecutors’ use of more than two dozen social media posts and text messages, as well as witness testimony, that showed all three men using racist slurs or otherwise disparaging Black people. The slurs often included the use of the N-word and other derogatory terms for Black people, according to an FBI witness who examined the men’s social media pages. The men had also advocated for violence against Black people, the witness said.
The social media evidence included a 2018 Facebook comment Travis McMichael made on a video of Black man playing a prank on a white person. He used an expletive and a racial slur after he wrote: “I’d kill that .... .”
Travis’ attorney must’ve known damn well there was no way to dispute the racism accusations against her client after his “I’d kill that n-word,” post. However, she did argue that prosecutors failed to prove the neighborhood where Arbery was jogging was a “public road.”
On the other hand, the report says Bryan’s attorney claims prosecutors influenced the jury with the flagrant, racist social media posts, failing to prove how they were directly related to the fatal chase.
We’ll see if the appeals court buys that. But even if they get their federal convictions overturned, the McMichaels and Bryan still have to eat a life sentence on state murder charges.