Ahmaud Arbery’s killer fears for his own life in prison, court filing says

Travis McMichael, 36, was sentenced to life in prison for Arbery’s murder along with his father and neighbour

One of the men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery is afraid he’ll be murdered in Georgia state prison, according to a memo filed by his lawyer ahead of a sentencing date Monday.

Travis McMichael, 36, was convicted on state murder charges along with his father, Gregory Johns McMichael, and neighbour, William “Roddie” Bryan, in connection with the 2020 shooting death of Mr Arbery. The trio mistook the 25-year-old Black man, who was running through their Georgia neighbourhood, for a burglar, chased him down and killed him.

The McMichaels were sentenced to life in prison without parole, while Bryan was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

All three were also found guilty in February on federal hate crimes charges for which they are scheduled to be sentenced Monday.

Last week, Travis McMichael’s lawyer filed a memo requesting that her client be kept in federal custody, rather than transferred to state prison, because he feared for his life.

Amy Lee Copeland told the federal court in the memo that the younger McMichael has been held at the Glynn County Detention Center since May 2020 and has received threats that peope were “waiting for him” and that he “should not go into the yard, and that correctional officers have promised a willingness (whether for pay or for free) to keep certain doors unlocked and backs turned to allow inmates to harm him,” CNN reported.

“His concern is that he will promptly be killed upon delivery to the state prison system for service of that sentence: He has received numerous threats of death that are credible in light of all circumstances, and the government has a pending investigation into the Georgia DOC’s ability to keep inmates safe in a system where murder rates have tripled,” the memo said.

It added that McMichael received so many threats that he stopped counting them in January “at around 800 threats,” in addition to citing “the government’s investigation into the violence in Georgia state prisons,” according to CNN.

A lawyer for his father last week made a similar request, asking the judge not to send his client to a state prison “whose very operation may enable inmates to engage in dangerous and even deadly activities,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Earlier this year, the court rejected a plea deal that would have allowed the McMichaels to serve 30 years in federal prison. The men face another life sentence Monday at the hearing in Brunswick, Georgia, because the federal hate charges carry that possible penalty.

Mr Arbery’s family not only opposed the plea deal that was ultimately rejected by the judge but have also opposed the possibility that the 25-year-old’s killers serve out their sentences in federal, rather than state, custody.