In late January, a federal judge rejected the plea agreement with the Justice Department involving the hate crime charge in the Ahmaud Arbery case. This came after the Arbery family expressed their distaste for the agreements.
Ahmaud Arbery was a 25-year-old Black man who was tragically killed after three white males chased him around Southern Georgia and then fatally shot him. The plea deal would have been the first time the men admitted to having had racial motives when it came to Arbery’s murder. In November all three men were convicted of murder and other crimes in state court.
But, the original plea deals are not enough. The deal would prosecute the men and have them living in federal prison, which compared to state prison is a much safer prison. The plea would immediately send two of the men to federal prison for only up to 30 years, a sentence the Arbery family is not too fond of. Given the pain they have made their Arbery family go through, they deserve a stricter sentence. Their stricter sentences will also serve as an example of the consequences of racism and push for equality within our justice system.
The Arbery family is pushing for greater change by disagreeing with the original plea deals. “I’m asking on the behalf of his family, on behalf of his memory, and on behalf of fairness that you do not grant this plea in order to allow these men to transfer out of Georgia state custody into the federal prisons, where they prefer to be,” said the mother of Arbery, Wanda Cooper-Jones.
Judge Lisa Godbey Wood, the judge presiding over the federal case, agreed with the family and rejected the plea deal. The deal’s content was formulated in a way that would have forced the judge to follow “its exact terms.”
The criminal justice system has a history of unfair outcomes for crimes dealing with racially motivated killings. It is not hard to see the pattern that institutionalized racism is leaving behind. Such as with the case of Lsquan McDonald, 17, who was killed by a Chicago police officer. The officer was only sentenced to 7 years in prison. Or the case of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was fatally shot by Cleveland police officers in 2014. In December of 2015, the jury declined to indict the officer who fired the fatal shot.
The Arbery case will mark an important milestone for how future racially motivated attacks will be prosecuted. Hopefully, given the substantial evidence of Arbery’s murder being racially motivated, the punishment will be substantial enough to fit the crime. The federal charges are needed on top of the state charges in order for it to be seen as a precedent case for future hate crimes and racially motivated murders.
This verdict can help lead by example and diminish any more chances of having similar cases committed and to advance the criminal justice system away from its current racist state.
