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McMichaels withdraw guilty pleas to set up hate crimes trial in Arbery killing

['Stanley Dunlap', 'More From Author', '- February']

Date: 2022-02

Greg and Travis McMichaels have withdrawn their guilty pleas in the federal hate crimes trial for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, clearing the way for the father and son and their neighbor to stand trial starting Monday.

By Friday morning, the McMichaels had formally retracted their guilty pleas after U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood rejected their agreements on Monday. That deal would have allowed them to serve the first 30-years of their sentences in federal prison instead of a Georgia state prison for killing the 25-year-old Black man as he ran down a suburban Brunswick street on Feb. 23, 2020.

On Monday, Arbery’s parents denounced the settlement reached between federal prosecutors and the McMichaels as being too lenient by allowing them to choose a federal prison over a state penitentiary and by not giving them the maximum life sentence.

In November’s state trial, a Glynn County jury found the McMichaels and William “Roddie” Bryan guilty for the murder of Arbery, who they chased after in pickup trucks after seeing the unarmed jogger leaving the site of an unoccupied home that was under construction.

The McMichaels received life sentences without the possibility of parole while Bryan, who joined the chase midstream, has a life sentence that comes with a chance of getting released from prison. All three were convicted on murder charges in Glynn County Superior Court just before Thanksgiving.

During the federal trial, the U.S. District Attorney’s Office will attempt to prove that the three white men’s decision to chase after Arbery was partially motivated by his race.

The lengthy jury selection process for the federal case will begin on Monday at the Southern District of Georgia courthouse in Brunswick.

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