A US district judge in the state of Georgia on Monday sentenced father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael to life in prison for federal hate crimes over the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.

Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was jogging in a suburban neighborhood when three white men chased and shot him in February 2020. 

The McMichaels and their neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, had been convicted of counts of murder and kidnapping. 

Monday's sentencing is largely symbolic, as the trio are already serving life-sentences.

A hate crimes trial

Judge Lisa Godbey Wood said the McMichaels had received a fair trial.

"You acted because of the color of Mr. Arbery's skin," the judge told Travis McMichael, a 36-year-old former US Coast Guard mechanic. "A young man is dead. Ahmaud Arbery will be forever 25. And what happened, a jury found, happened because he's Black."

Before Godbey Wood handed down the two sentences, Arbery's mother told the court that she felt every shot that was fired at her son.

"It's so unfair, so unfair, so unfair that he was killed while he was not even committing a crime,'' Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery's mother, said.

Greg McMichael, a 66-year-old former police officer, addressed Arbery's family. "I'm sure my words mean very little to you but I want to assure you I never wanted any of this to happen. There was no malice in my heart or my son's heart that day," he said.

The McMichaels had agreed to plead guilty, with the son acknowledging that he singled out Arbery because of his "race and color."

But the judge rejected the plea agreement, which would have bound her to handing down a 30-year sentence, to be served in a federal prison instead of a state prison. 

Travis McMichael's attorney had argued for a lighter sentence, comparing the case to that of the killing of George Floyd. Derek Chauvin, the policeman who killed Floyd, received a 21-year sentence. 

However, Chauvin was not charged with targeting Floyd because of his race. 

jsi, fb/nm (AP, Reuters)