By Rich McKay

BRUNSWICK (Ga.) -Jurors resumed their deliberations Tuesday in federal hate crime trial of three men convicted on state murder charges of chasing Ahmaud Abery down, killing, and executing him while he was jogging around his Georgia neighborhood.

After closing arguments by defense and prosecutors, the predominately white jury of U.S. District Court received Travis McMichael’s case against his father, Gregory McMichael (66), and William Bryan (52) on Monday afternoon.

A 12-member panel made up of three Black and nine white members deliberated over three hours Monday. Judge Lisa Wood then adjourned the proceedings to the Brunswick (NYSE):) Georgia courthouse in the late evening.

Wood revealed to prosecutors and defense lawyers that she had received a letter from an unknown juror on Tuesday morning. The note asked Wood: “Which section of the verdict form should I read?”This could indicate that the decision was near.

Wednesday is the second anniversary.

The three men are accused of Arbery’s deprivation of civil rights. This is a hate-crimes offense that alleges racially motivated violence. The fatal encounter in 2020, in which Arbery was attacked and killed, took place near Brunswick in Georgia. It happened about 270-miles southeast of Atlanta.

Bryan, on the other hand, was not charged.

A maximum of 20 years imprisonment is possible for the hate crime charge. It is one of the most grave charges in the indictment. The maximum sentence for attempted kidnapping can be up to 20 years imprisonment.

Following their convictions for murder and other offenses in Arbery’s fatal shooting, three of the men received life sentences in state court. Arbery was a high school football star and worked at a truck washing company as well as his father’s landscaping firm.

While the earlier trial did not address racial issues in any way, state prosecutors focused on the simple murder case against these three men.

VIGILANTISM AND RACISM

Jurors at the federal trial will have to decide something more complex: whether or not the government has proven that defendants drove by racism and vigilantism when they chased Arbery in pick-up trucks through a suburban white community.

Arbery was finally captured and Travis McMichael fired three shotgun shots at point-blank distance that killed Arbery.

Bryan recorded cell phone video and it caused outrage two months later when Bryan posted the footage on social media. This was at a moment when no arrests had been made by police.

Civil rights activists stated that Arbery’s assailants were not charged in time because of U.S. laws that allowed white criminals to continue their unjustified killings of Black people.

Arbery was named along with other names in the protests that took place after George Floyd, an unarmed Black Minneapolis man, was shot to death by a white cop kneeling down on Floyd until Floyd could not breathe.

Arbery’s murderers were convicted federally. This is the first time that hate-crimes juries have been tried.

Jurors were presented by prosecution with long histories of racist comments and violent slurs made on social media by three men. This evidence was used to show that Arbery had been singled out because of his skin color.

Christopher Perras (special litigator in the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division) stated that they were motivated by “racial assumption”, racial hatred and racial anger. They saw a Black man living in their area and thought the worst about him.

The defense attorneys went after Arbery’s behavior, saying that the McMichaels pursued him because they saw him at night on at least four occasions in a house being built and thought his actions suspicious.

Bryan’s lawyer claimed that Bryan joined the chase in his truck after he saw McMichaels following Arbery. He shouted at Arbery to stop, and then assumed the McMichaels had run away for “something wrong.”

While the defense acknowledged the existence of racist social discourses and epithets from their clients throughout the years, they insisted that these did not support racism.

McMichaels and Arbery had agreed to plead guilty at federal court last month.

Judge rejected her plea deal because she had to serve a 30-year sentence. Prosecutors agreed that the sentences would be completed in a federal jail before the men returned to Georgia. Georgia is generally viewed as having a harsher prison environment than federal penitentiaries.

All three of the defendants were sentenced and their plea agreements were canceled.