The three white men who chased down and killed Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was jogging through their Georgia neighborhood last year, were all found guilty of murder charges.
The high-profile shooting — and the 10 weeks it took for law enforcement to make the first arrests — galvanized racial injustice protests in the summer of 2020.
“It’s been a long fight, it’s been a hard fight, but God is good,” Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said Wednesday outside the Glynn County Courthouse in Brunswick, Ga. “I never thought this day would come,” she added, saying her son will now “rest in peace.”
After the judge read the first guilty verdict, a whoop rang out in the courtroom. “Long time coming,” the person, later identified as Arbery’s father, Marcus, exclaimed as the judge expelled him from the courtroom.
Father and son Greg McMichael, 65, and Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, all faced the same nine criminal counts in Georgia state court: one count of malice murder, four counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault, one count of false imprisonment and one count of criminal attempt to commit a felony. They pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Jurors found all three men guilty of nearly all the counts against them. Travis McMichael was found guilty of all nine counts. Greg McMichael was found not guilty of one count of malice murder, and Bryan was found not guilty of one count of malice murder, one count of felony murder and one count of aggravated assault.
As the verdicts were read, Travis McMichael appeared largely emotionless and eventually let out a sigh. Greg McMichael dropped his head at the first guilty verdict against him. Bryan wore a pained frown as his verdicts were read aloud by Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley.
Prosecutors have said that they intend to seek life in prison without parole for the three defendants. The date of their sentencing has not yet been scheduled
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