Federal Hate Crime Conviction in Ahmaud Arbery's fatal shooting

Relevants terms in the story: 

- a federal hate crime
- U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood
- sentences
- life without parole in state court for Arbery's
- federal prison
- safety in the state prison system
- federal jury
- convicted
- violating Arbery's civil rights
- targeted him because of his race
- found guilty of attempted kidnapping
- using guns in the commission of a violent crime.
- prosecutor
- showing the jury roughly two dozen text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and Bryan used racist slurs and made disparaging comments about Black people.
- state Superior Court judge
- imposed life sentences
- denied any chance of parole.
- Glynn County,
- custody of U.S. marshals
- first charged and convicted of murder in a state court
- Georgia Department of Corrections
- life terms in a state prison
- U.S. Justice Department investigation
- violence between inmates.
- retribution and revenge
- Wood said she didn't have the authority to order the state to relinquish custody of Travis McMichael to the Federal Bureau of Prisons

Click below for the article.

- Father and son sentenced to life for a hate crime in Ahmaud Arbery's death.

The white father and son convicted of murder in Ahmaud Arbery's fatal shooting after they chased the 25-year-old Black man through a Georgia neighborhood were sentenced Monday to life in prison for committing a federal hate crime.

U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood handed down the sentences against Travis McMichael, 36, and his father, Greg McMichael, 66, reiterating the gravity of the February 2020 killing that shattered their Brunswick community and became part of a larger national reckoning over racial injustice. William "Roddie" Bryan, 52, who recorded cellphone video of the slaying, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

"A young man is dead. Ahmaud Arbery will be forever 25. And what happened a jury found happened because he's Black," Wood said.

The McMichaels were previously sentenced to life without parole in state court for Arbery's murder and had asked the judge to divert them to a federal prison to serve their sentences, saying they were worried about their safety in the state prison system. Wood declined their request.

It is a violation of federal law to deny people their rights based on race. In this case the violation was killing them.

And since the above is a federal offense, this conviction does not violate the constitution's prohibition on double jeopardy.

For more on federal hate crimes: 

- 18 U.S. Code § 249 - Hate crime acts.

- DOJ: Federal Hate Crime Laws.

- Wikipedia: Hate crime laws in the United States.

- FBI: Federal Civil Rights Statutes.

- FBI: Hate Crime Statistics.

- DOJ: Federal Hate Crime Prosecutions, 2005-19.