One of the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery pleaded guilty to federal hate-crime charges on Monday, admitting for the first time he chased the 25-year-old Black man because of his race.
Travis McMichael changed his plea at a hearing in the U.S. District Court in Brunswick, Ga., after reaching a plea deal with federal prosecutor. He pleaded guilty to using a gun in his attempt to kidnap Arbery because of Arbery's "race and colour," resulting in Arbery's death.
His father, Gregory McMichael, was also due to plead guilty as part of an agreement at a subsequent hearing on Monday.
The McMichaels were convicted of murder last November in a state court in Brunswick alongside their neighbour William "Roddie" Bryan.
The February 2020 killing of Arbery, 25, sparked national outrage when cellphone video of his shooting emerged months later and the public learned that local authorities had declined to arrest his pursuers.
Family 'devastated'
The McMichaels' plea agreements must be accepted by U.S. District Judge Lisa Wood at the hearings on Monday afternoon if they are to avoid a federal trial, which had been scheduled to start xjmtzywnext week.
The attorney for Arbery's family, Lee Merritt, said in a statement that he will oppose the deals in the hearings on Monday and that Arbery's family was "devastated."
"The DOJ has gone behind my back to offer the men who murdered my son a deal to make their time in prison easier to serve," Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said in statement provided by Merritt. "I have been completely betrayed by the DOJ lawyers," she said, referring to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Federal prisons are perceived to be generally safer than state prisons, and Arbery's family said the McMichaels were motivated to improving the conditions of their custody.
The McMichaels were sentenced to life in prison without parole by a state judge on Jan. 7. Bryan was also sentenced to life in prison, but the judge ruled that he could seek parole after 30 years.
State prosecutors told the court that they had evidence that "racial animus" had been behind the men's decision to jump in their pick-up trucks and chase Arbery through their quiet, leafy neighbourhood on a sunny afternoon in Feb. 23, 2020. In the end, they decided against showing any of that evidence to the jury.
Arbery's family and civil rights activists instead looked to the federal trial as vital to establishing what they said was the heart of the matter: The federal prosecutors charged the men with violating Arbery's civil rights by attacking him because of his "race and colour."
The three defendants had pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
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On Sunday, federal prosecutors filed notices asking Wood to accept plea agreements with the McMichaels. No mention was made of a deal with Bryan, who is due to stand trial on Feb. 7 unless a deal is reached. Bryan's lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office for Georgia's Southern District said federal prosecutors would not comment before Monday's hearings were over. Attorneys for the McMichaels did not respond to requests for comment.
Arbery was jogging through the Satilla Shores neighborhood in the afternoon when the McMichaels decided to grab their guns, jump in a pickup truck and chase him.
Bryan joined the chase in his own pickup truck after it passed his driveway, and pulled out his cellphone to record Travis McMichael firing a shotgun at Arbery at close range.
