This week, the federal hate crimes case against the men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery in 2020 began with jury selection. Travis McMichael, his father Gregory, and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan were all sentenced to life in prison without parole after being convicted last year of chasing down and murdering Arbery while he went for a run. Even though the outcome of the federal case won’t change their fates, the trial’s stakes are still high. The prosecutors hope to prove that the McMichaels and Bryan were motivated by racial animus in the killing, evidence of which has been reported in the news, but was studiously avoided by prosecutors in the state murder trial.
That vindication, criminal justice experts say, isn’t just important for the family. The federal hate crime case has become a proving ground, testing the criminal justice system’s ability to recognize and address the role racism played in Arbery’s murder. The harms in this case are personal—the Arbery family lost a son—but they are also political. People across the country watched the McMichaels walk free, with the help of the officials tasked with investigating the crime, for months after the murder. Indeed, many have called the murder a modern-day lynching, drawing parallels to an era in which white violence against Black people went largely ignored and unpunished by the state. In this light, a hate crime conviction and appropriate punishment of Bryan and the McMichaels are seen as a corrective to not only the Arbery family’s loss, but also decades of racial violence.
Such a vindication won’t come easy. The family and the federal judge overseeing the hate crime case have already rejected a plea deal that prosecutors struck with the McMichaels, they say after consulting the family’s attorneys. Under the deal, the McMichaels would have confessed…