To understand how perverse is the application of “hate” to a given crime no better case presents itself than that of father Greg and son Travis McMichael. Greg and Travis were involved in the February 2020 Georgia shooting death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, a chronic thief and troublemaker with documented mental-health issues.
After reviewing the evidence, including a video of the shooting, local District Attorney George Barnhill chose not to bring charges. The McMichaels, Barnhill argued, “were following, in ‘hot pursuit’ a burglary suspect, with solid first hand probable cause, in their neighborhood, and asking/telling him to stop. It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived. Under Georgia Law this is perfectly legal.” No new evidence surfaced to contradict Barnhill’s opinion.
What did surface was a media-driven, politically motivated mob. Under mounting pressure, State of Georgia officials took control of the case from the local officials and arrested the McMichaels for murder on May 7, 2020.
The pressure would only grow. Weeks after the arrest of the McMichaels, George Floyd died while in police custody in Minneapolis. The effect on all racially charged trials everywhere in the United States was profound. Georgia was no exception. In November 2021, the McMichaels were convicted of murder. On January 7, 2022, Judge Timothy Walmsley sentenced father and son to life without parole.
While the state case moved forward, in April 2021 President Biden’s Department of Justice launched a criminal hate crime case against the McMichaels. Once convicted on state charges, and expecting no justice from the Feds, the McMichaels pleaded guilty to the federal charges.
Their motive was self-preservation. As the Washington Post reported, “The McMichaels were concerned that the Georgia state prison system would be particularly unsafe, given the racial nature of their crime and the fact that Gregory McMichael was a former police officer.”
That is exactly why Arbery’s vengeful mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, “spoke out forcefully against the agreement.” She wanted to see the McMichaels exposed to racial retribution in prison.
It should be noted that Ms. Cooper-Jones had once called 911 to report on Arbery’s troubled behavior. She confessed to being frightened of a son who had been diagnosed with “Schizoaffective Disorder.” No matter, in an embarrassing turn of events, the DoJ capitulated to Cooper-Jones, threw out the contract it had signed with the McMichaels, and forced them to trial.
On February 22, 2022 a federal jury took no more than three hours to convict the McMichaels on all charges. If life without parole wasn’t punishment enough, Greg McMichael was sentenced to life plus seven years and son Travis was sentenced to life plus ten for committing a federal hate crime.
Said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division, “It was important that this murder was prosecuted for what it was — a brutal and abhorrent racially-motivated hate crime.” If anyone committed a brutal and abhorrent racially-motivated hate crime it was Frederick Demond Scott. At worse, the McMichaels were guilty of impolite texts and jokes.
Greg McMichael, a U.S. Navy veteran and retired chief investigator for the Glynn County district attorney’s office, was not even guilty of that. As his attorney pointed out in his appeal, “Despite three decades in law enforcement, no evidence was presented at trial showing that Gregory McMichael had ever been the subject of any formal complaint involving excessive force or racially insensitive conduct directed at suspects, defendants, or co-workers.”