Travis McMichael, recently convicted in Georgia state court along with his father, Greg McMichael, and neighbor William Bryan in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, withdrew his guilty plea to federal hate crime charges Friday and will join the others at trial beginning Monday, The Washington Post reported Friday.
The three were involved in the shooting death of Arbery, 25, a Black man who was jogging in a Georgia suburb in February 2020. They said they believed Arbery was responsible for recent construction site burglaries in the neighborhood, according to The New York Times.
The three white men were convicted and sentenced in state court to life in prison. Both McMichaels are to serve their sentence without the possibility of parole, though Bryan could eventually become eligible.
Both McMichaels were offered a plea deal in which they would plead guilty to federal hate crime charges and publicly declare that race was the primary reason for the killing, ensuring they would spend at least 30 years in federal prison for the crime, but Judge Lisa Godbey Wood rejected the deal in a hearing Monday and said she would allow the defendants to withdraw their pleas and stand trial.
Arbery's parents objected to the deal, telling the Post that it would give the defendants their ''prison of choice.''
The three men are appealing their state convictions.
In making the case to the court to accept the deal, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara Lyons said that Travis McMichael was not a member of any hate group, and did not set out to take Arbery's life.
''Travis McMichael did not belong to any hate groups, and did not set out on Feb. 23, 2020, to carry out an act of violence against an African American person,'' the Times reported Lyons saying in Monday's hearing. ''But he had made assumptions about Ahmaud Arbery that he would not have made if Ahmaud Arbery had been white.''
Travis McMichael's attorney Amy Lee Copeland, and J. Pete Theodocion, who represents Bryan in the case, did not comment on the story for the Times, but Georgia attorney Page Pate said that proving race as the main factor in the killing may be difficult for the government.
''It's not just proving that they're racists, and not just proving that they killed Ahmaud Arbery without justification,'' Pate said. ''It's proving that their racism is the reason they killed Ahmaud Arbery.''
Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said she opposed the deal.
''All they would have to do is stand up and say that they were motivated by hate, and then this court will concede to their preferred conditions of confinement,'' the Times reported Cooper-Jones said in court Monday. ''I do not need to hear them say they were motivated by hate. That does me no good. It does my family no good.''
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