Analyzing the federal hate crimes trial for the men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery

Judy Woodruff:

As we reported, the three white men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery have today also been convicted of federal hate crimes and attempted kidnapping.

His murder is one of several major flash points that have triggered protests, dialogue and new laws regarding racial justice, policing and the treatment of Black Americans.

John Yang has a closer look at this verdict.

John Yang:

Judy, the convictions come a day before the second anniversary of Arbery's murder.

Outside the courthouse, after the verdicts were red, Arbery's murder, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said nothing can make up for that loss.

Wanda Cooper Jones, Mother of Ahmaud Arbery: Healing? I, as a mom, will never heal. And they gave us a sense of a small victory, but we, as a family, will never get victory because Ahmaud is gone forever.

John Yang:

The convictions mean that all three men will likely spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Margaret Coker is editor in chief of The Current, a nonprofit news organization covering Southeast Georgia. She covered both the state murder trial and the federal hate crimes trial of the three convicted men.

Margaret Coker, thanks for joining us.

This jury did not take very long to reach their verdict. Tell us what it was like inside the courtroom this morning.

Margaret Coker, Editor in Chief, The Current: Yes, it was extraordinarily emotional, first off, because it's been such a long struggle for the Arbery family to see justice.

Two years ago, when Ahmaud was murdered as he was out for a jog on a Sunday sunny afternoon, it took 74 days for anyone to be arrested. And that's in large part because local law enforcement, both police and the district attorneys here, accepted the version of events that the defendants, the killers, had given them, which was that they were acting in self-defense.

So, the arc of justice has moved quite — quite steeply since then. The face of justice in Georgia today looked like this. There was a Black man who was the lead FBI investigator for the government. The lead U.S. attorney was a Black woman. And on the jury, the 12-person jury, the foreman was a Black man who got to hand over to the judge the guilty verdict, unanimous verdict, of guilty on all counts.

John Yang:

You're a longtime Georgian, Margaret.

The significance of this arc of justice taking place in the Deep South, not — and not the metropolitan South, not — this isn't metropolitan Atlanta. This is Brunswick, Georgia. What's the significance of this?

Margaret Coker:

Yes, Brunswick is a majority-minority town. It's surrounded by a majority white county.

And, for decades, Black people here have felt both implicit and explicit racism in the police force. We at The Current have done a deep-dive investigation into the police department that was in charge of this case. Years have gone by without — without Black people seeing meaningful justice, both in criminal and civil cases here.

So people in Brunswick are celebratory. My goodness. They have gone through extraordinary amount of struggle in order to feel like they are defended by law enforcement, instead of being targeted by law enforcement. And now their town is going to go down in history as the place where Georgia has secured the first federal hate crimes victory in the whole history.

John Yang:

The Justice Department says that most federal hate crime investigations don't result in prosecutions because of insufficient evidence.

What was the evidence that the prosecution presented in this case?

Margaret Coker:

Right.

For your viewers who watched the state murder trial that was broadcast live on TV, the prosecutors in that case left out a lot of the evidence about race and kept racial issues as a very, very small part of the case that they secured their murder convictions on.

Here, the federal hate crimes trial, everything depended on the prosecutors being able to prove that the defendants weren't just killers, but they were racist killers. And so we saw a barrage of social media postings, text messages, what one defense attorney called communications with like-minded people.

It is the stereotypical racist, white South. And they showed themselves in their true colors, and they showed themselves with their own words calling Black people for years names like monkeys and savages. It was just extraordinarily hard to hear for both I think the Arbery family, but for all of us who are sitting in the court as well.

John Yang:

What was the defense's argument?

Margaret Coker:

The defense hardly put up an argument.

Now, in U.S. courts, the defense doesn't have to mount a defense. The burden of proof is all on the prosecution. So there were three separate defense attorneys. Only one presented a witness.

And the brunt of the argument sort of went like this, that the defendants, all three white men, of course, all of whom lived in this majority white neighborhood known as Satilla Shores, that they weren't racist, they were vigilantes, that they were aggressively trying to patrol their neighborhoods from all threats, whether it was a suspicious white person or a suspicious Black person.

So the argument of being race-neutral, but aggressive towards strangers, was the only real defense that they put up.

John Yang:

Outside the courthouse after the verdict, Arbery's mother was very sharp in her criticism of the Justice Department. They had reached a plea deal, which the family opposed and the judge rejected.

Talk a little bit about that.

Margaret Coker:

That's right.

Before the trial even started, a plea deal had been worked out between prosecutors and two of the defendants, Travis and Greg McMichael. And, in that plea deal, they agreed to plead guilty to one charge, the main hate crimes charge, so that they could serve that sentence in a federal penitentiary.

And Arbery's parents had vociferously argued against that deal. They did not want any special measures or any perceived leniency to their son's killers. They did not want the McMichaels to be serving a sentence in a federal prison. They wanted him — both of them to stay in a Georgia state penitentiary, which is viewed by people here in Georgia as one of the most terrible places to spend your — spend a sentence.

John Yang:

Margaret Coker, editor in chief of The Current, thank you very much.

Margaret Coker:

You're welcome.