Hate crimes trial opens in Georgia of murderers of Black jogger

The hate crimes trial of three white men convicted of the murder of a Black jogger began Monday in Georgia with prosecutors recounting their alleged use of vulgar racial slurs and history of racism.

Travis McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael and their neighbour William Bryan were sentenced to life in prison last month for the February 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old African-American man.

The McMichaels and Bryan are now back in court facing federal hate crimes charges for violating Arbery’s civil rights.

The McMichaels and Bryan chased Arbery in their pickup trucks on February 23, 2020, as he ran through their neighbourhood near the town of Brunswick, Georgia.

Travis McMichael confronted Arbery as he passed by their truck and shot and killed him.

Prosecutors in the state trial of the three men did not dwell on the racial aspects of the murder in making their case.

But Department of Justice attorneys in the federal trial made it the focus of their opening arguments, according to local media reports.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein as saying that if Arbery had been white he would have gone for a jog and “made it home for Sunday supper.”

“They made assumptions about Ahmaud because of the colour of his skin, and it would not have happened if he was white,” Bernstein said.

Bernstein apologized to the court before recounting some of the racial slurs used by the younger McMichael in text messages to refer to Black people.

The epithets included “animals,” “monkeys,” “subhuman savages” and the particularly offensive n-word.

The elder McMichael was quoted as having said “Blacks are nothing but trouble” while Bryan allegedly used a racial epithet to describe a Black man who was dating his daughter.

“This case is not about racial slurs,” Bernstein said, “but these slurs can provide you with evidence as to why a defendant did what he did.”

The jury hearing the case is made of eight whites, three Blacks and one Hispanic.

The McMichaels had reached plea deals last month on the hate crimes charges but a judge rejected the deals after Arbery’s relatives vehemently objected to the agreements.

Under the deals, the McMichaels would have pleaded guilty and served the first 30 years of their life sentences in a federal prison rather than a state facility.

Travis McMichael, 36, and Gregory McMichael, 66, are serving sentences of life without parole.

Bryan, 52, who had a less direct role in the murder and cooperated with investigators, was given life with the possibility of parole.

The racially-charged case added fuel to nationwide protests over police killings of African Americans sparked initially by the murder in May 2020 of George Floyd in Minneapolis.