Ahmaud Arbery: Prosecutors focus on killers' online racist history in US hate-crimes trial

Three white men who murdered black jogger had long history of using racial epithets, federal prosecutor says

A federal prosecutor said during a federal hate crimes trial that the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery did so because of his race. AP

A federal prosecutor in Georgia said on Monday that the three white men facing a hate-crimes trial for murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, had a long history of using racial epithets and undoubtedly killed him because of his race.

Arbery did nothing to deserve his fate, Barbara Bernstein, deputy chief of the Department of Justice's civil rights division, told the US District Court in the coastal town of Brunswick in her opening statement.

Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and neighbour William "Roddie" Bryan were convicted last year of shooting Arbery dead after chasing him in pickup trucks through their mostly white neighbourhood because they wrongly suspected he may have committed a crime.

Ms Bernstein said if Arbery, an avid runner, had been white, he would have been able to go for a Sunday afternoon jog unmolested and "been home in time for Sunday supper".

Unlike last year's state trial, the federal hate-crimes trial will focus more squarely on the motive for the killing and whether the defendants targeted Arbery because he was black, as the prosecution alleges.

Ms Bernstein cited several messages made on Facebook and elsewhere in which all three men used racial epithets.

She especially highlighted the words of Travis McMichael - who shot Arbery - who she said had made violent and racist statements on social media. He had also told a friend that he was glad to have left the US Coast Guard because he no longer had to work with or be around black people, she added.

Defence attorneys for the three men said in their opening statements that they found their clients' use of racial epithets deeply offensive, but stressed it was no reason to convict them. They said the men were not motivated by Arbery's race.

"I can't stand before you and say my client has never used the 'N-word'," said Amy Copeland, the attorney for Travis McMichael. "He did. He left a digital footprint over several years."

But Ms Copeland said Travis McMichael had chiefly been concerned with cases of theft that had left his neighbourhood on high alert when he decided to chase down Arbery.

Trial experts told Reuters that the challenge for the prosecutors will be to back up the evidence of racist utterances with evidence that on the day of the shooting the three men were motivated by racial animus.

The court was scheduled to hear from Special Agent Richard Dial of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who has previously testified that Bryan told his office that Travis McMichael uttered a racial slur as Arbery lay dying.