Killed black jogger Ahmaud Arbery – once more life sentence for shooter
Washington. Two and a half years following the murder of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery, one of the three convicted white men has once more been sentenced to life in prison. That was decided on Monday by a judge in a US federal court in the state of Georgia, as US media reported unanimously. Gunman Travis M. was found guilty under federal law of hate crimes in February. A jury found in February that the three men violated Arbery’s constitutional rights.
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Arbery, 25, was shot and killed while jogging in February 2020 near the city of Brunswick, Georgia. The investigation only really got going when the case later gained national and international attention through a disturbing cell phone video of the crime.
A little later – on May 25, 2020 – the African American George Floyd was killed in a brutal police operation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After that, there were months of protests once morest racism and police violence in the United States.
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Charged under federal law because of racial background
A jury had already found the three men guilty in a Georgia state trial and sentenced them to life imprisonment in January. The shooter Travis M. was then found guilty of murder by the jury. The two co-defendants, Travis M’s father Gregory M. and neighbor William B., were found guilty of, among other things, aggravated assault and manslaughter. All three men were also charged under federal law because of the racial background to the crime.
During the current trial before the federal court, the prosecutor had shown that the accused had written racist text messages or made racist statements in the past. The defense argued that Arbery was not being hunted for racial reasons, but because the men suspected him of a crime.
RND/dpa
