Georgia Judge Timothy Walmsley ruled on Friday that Travis McMichael, 35, and his father, 66-year-old Gregory McMichael, were sentenced to life in prison without parole for the death of Ahmaud Arbery, whose fatal shooting in the US state of Georgia in 2020 sparked mass protests against racism.
Judge Walmsley also sentenced McMichaels’s neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, to life in prison, but he will have the possibility of parole after 30 years.
A Georgia court in November found the three men – who chased and fatally shot Arbery in February 2020 as he jogged through the coastal community of Satilla Shores – guilty of a variety of charges, including felony murder.
Arbery was running through Satilla Shores, Georgia, on the afternoon of February 23, 2020, when the McMichaels grabbed their guns and drove across the predominantly white neighborhood with their truck in pursuit.
A graphic video of Arbery’s murder, released two months after his death, spurred mass protests against anti-Black racism.
Walmsley said at the hearing in Glynn County Court in Brunswick on Friday that the McMichaels received the harshest sentence he could due in part to their “callous” actions that were captured on video.
During the sentencing hearing earlier on Friday, Arbery’s relatives had asked the judge to show no lenience to the three men. Defense lawyers had pleaded for leniency, saying none of the three men ever intended for Arbery to be killed.
Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing the Arbery family, expressed satisfaction with the sentences, saying the three convicted indictees “stalked, cornered, and lynched” Ahmaud Arbery in broad daylight. He said the outcome of the trial represented a milestone in the struggle for racial justice.
“But we are not done. The tragic murder of Ahmaud Arbery must not be in vain,” Crump said in a statement. “America, we are showing progress. Now is not the time to retreat. We must continue to demand better from law enforcement, from our justice system and from society as a whole.”
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