The three men convicted of killing a Black man in Georgia have been found guilty of federal hate crimes, BBC News reports.
Jurors found all three defendants guilty of targeting 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery because he was Black, accepting the prosecution's argument that they were driven by "racial assumptions, racial resentment and racial anger".
Father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael, and their neighbor William 'Roddie' Bryan, had already been convicted of Arbery's murder in November.
The new conviction concerns a separate set of federal charges filed by the US Justice Department and could see all three men receive additional life sentences on top of those they have already been served.
Jurors considered five separate federal charges, including two federal hate-crime statutes, one count of kidnapping, and two firearms charges against the McMichaels. The defendants were convicted on all counts brought against them.
This latest ruling comes almost exactly two years after Arbery was shot while out for a Sunday jog in February of 2020. He was seen by the McMichaels, who - believing Arbery to have committed a crime in their Brunswick neighborhood - gave chase with weapons.
They were joined along the way by their neighbor Bryan, who recorded the pursuit from his pickup truck. In the video, Travis McMichael can be seen tussling with Arbery over a shotgun before fatally shooting him.
The McMichael's claimed to have acted in self-defense, while Bryan maintained he had no part in the killing. All three were so confident in their innocence that they released the video footage to the public - a decision that led to many members of the public calling for their arrest.
When the case was brought to trial, all three men pleaded not guilty to the murder charges brought against them.
After 11 hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Travis McMichael on all nine murder charges. His father Gregory - a former Georgia police officer - was found guilty on eight counts of murder, while Bryan was convicted of three felony murder counts alongside charges of aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal intent to commit a felony.
The father and son were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Bryan also received the maximum penalty, but was offered the possibility of parole in 30 years.
