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A jury convicted the three white men of federal hate crimes in 2022.
SAVANNAH, Ga. — The three white men convicted of hate crimes for chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia neighborhood in 2020 are expected to have their appeals heard by a federal court Wednesday.
Earlier in the year, the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals scheduled oral arguments in the case for March 27 in Atlanta. Attorneys for father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, are asking the court to throw out hate crime convictions returned by a jury in 2022.
The court hearing is expected to begin at 9 a.m.
Arbery, 25, was chased by the men in pickup trucks and fatally shot in the streets of a subdivision outside Brunswick on Feb. 23, 2020. His killing sparked a national outcry when cellphone video Bryan recorded of the shooting leaked online more than two months later.
The McMichaels armed themselves with guns and pursued Arbery after he was spotted running past their home. Bryan joined the chase in his own truck and recorded Travis McMichael shooting Arbery at close range with a shotgun.
The McMichaels and Bryan stood trial on hate crime charges in U.S. District Court less than three months after all three were convicted of murder in a Georgia state court. Federal prosecutors used social media posts, text messages and other evidence of past racist comments by all three men to argue they targeted Arbery because he was Black.
Attorneys for Greg McMichael and Bryan have argued in court filings that they chased Arbery because they mistakenly believed he was a criminal, not because of his race. Travis McMichael’s appeal argued a technicality, saying prosecutors failed to prove that Arbery was pursued and killed on public streets as stated in the indictment used to charge the three men.
Both McMichaels received life prison sentences in the hate crimes case, while Bryan was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
