SAVANNAH, GA – A federal appeals court earlier in November upheld the hate crime convictions of the three men sentenced in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a man who was fatally shot back in February of 2020 while being pursued by three individuals in a vehicle while he was running through the Satilla Shores neighborhood.
The Arbery case, which largely remained a local controversy when it occurred back in February 2020, garnered national attention following the death of George Floyd in May of that same year. Video of Arbery’s death began circulating online in early 2020, which would arguably become the prosecutors’ strongest piece of evidence at trial, with said video being recorded by none other than William Bryan, who was among the three convicted in Arbery’s killing.
During the original incident, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael were concerned about an unfamiliar person, who turned out to be Arbery, running through their neighborhood following a handful of trespassing and theft incidents that had impacted the local area in the preceding weeks.
The McMichaels armed themselves and hopped into a truck, pursuing an on-foot Arbery, with Bryan tailing Arbery and the McMichaels in a separate vehicle while filming the pursuit that ultimately turned deadly. Travis had exited the truck and drew down on an unarmed Arbery, with Arbery then getting into a physical confrontation with Travis before being shot at close range during the brief struggle.
All three men were found guilty of murder at the state level back in 2021, and a subsequent federal trial saw the men found guilty of hate crime charges back in 2022. While seemingly futile considering the three are serving life sentences for Arbery’s murder, for the state convictions, Bryan and the McMichaels sought to have the federal hate crime convictions overturned on appeal.
While nothing from the immediate incident, insofar as the pursuit of Arbery and subsequent shooting, could arguably be sufficient by itself to demonstrate any hateful motivations regarding racial or ethnic identity, messages and social media posts from the men were used as evidence of harboring “pent-up racial anger,” according to prosecutors.
On November 14th, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the hate crime convictions of all three men, despite the attorneys for the trio having argued in their appeal that past racist text messages and social media posts aren’t evidence of the men specifically targeting Arbery due to his race. Following the lost appeal, the attorneys representing the three men have yet to publicly comment on the outcome.
The Arbery case, which largely remained a local controversy when it occurred back in February 2020, garnered national attention following the death of George Floyd in May of that same year. Video of Arbery’s death began circulating online in early 2020, which would arguably become the prosecutors’ strongest piece of evidence at trial, with said video being recorded by none other than William Bryan, who was among the three convicted in Arbery’s killing.
During the original incident, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael were concerned about an unfamiliar person, who turned out to be Arbery, running through their neighborhood following a handful of trespassing and theft incidents that had impacted the local area in the preceding weeks.
The McMichaels armed themselves and hopped into a truck, pursuing an on-foot Arbery, with Bryan tailing Arbery and the McMichaels in a separate vehicle while filming the pursuit that ultimately turned deadly. Travis had exited the truck and drew down on an unarmed Arbery, with Arbery then getting into a physical confrontation with Travis before being shot at close range during the brief struggle.
All three men were found guilty of murder at the state level back in 2021, and a subsequent federal trial saw the men found guilty of hate crime charges back in 2022. While seemingly futile considering the three are serving life sentences for Arbery’s murder, for the state convictions, Bryan and the McMichaels sought to have the federal hate crime convictions overturned on appeal.
While nothing from the immediate incident, insofar as the pursuit of Arbery and subsequent shooting, could arguably be sufficient by itself to demonstrate any hateful motivations regarding racial or ethnic identity, messages and social media posts from the men were used as evidence of harboring “pent-up racial anger,” according to prosecutors.
On November 14th, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the hate crime convictions of all three men, despite the attorneys for the trio having argued in their appeal that past racist text messages and social media posts aren’t evidence of the men specifically targeting Arbery due to his race. Following the lost appeal, the attorneys representing the three men have yet to publicly comment on the outcome.
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Comments
2025-11-17T20:00-0500 | Comment by: James
Oh really! So we have a BLACK that kills a young WHITE girl on a bus but that is not a hate crime?! Black folks just remember, pay back is hell!