SENTENCED: Georgia man who shot Ahmaud Arbery gets life in prison for hate crime

Travis McMichael, the Georgia man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery, on Monday received a life prison sentence for committing a federal hate crime.

Sentencing hearings will be held for McMichael's father, Greg McMichael, and his neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, later in the day for the case.

U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood sentenced McMichael in the city of Brunswick, Ga., to the largely symbolic sentence of life in prison. McMichael was already sentenced in January to life without parole for Arbery's murder in a Georgia state court.

"And it's not lost on the court that it was the kind of trial that Ahmaud Arbery did not receive before he was shot and killed," Wood said at the sentencing, The Associated Press reported.

Wood previously rejected a plea deal that would have allowed McMichael to avoid a hate crime trial and spend the first 30 years of his sentence in federal prison.

The McMichaels armed themselves and pursued Arbery in their pickup truck in February 2020. Bryan joined in the chase and recorded the video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery. 

The McMichaels told law enforcement they thought Arbery was a burglar, but officials found he was innocent and unarmed.