Guilty verdict in Ahmaud Arbery case sends rare message about hate crimes, federal justice
With hate crimes surging to levels unseen in two decades, the guilty verdicts Tuesday in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia send a critically important message about the federal government's power and willingness to step into racially fraught cases and mete out justice.
Arbery's murder on Feb. 23, 2020 – followed soon after by the killings of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and George Floyd in Minneapolis – set off fierce racial protests nationwide. But none of the three killings had produced a hate-crimes conviction – until now.
In practical terms, the verdict on hate-crimes charges ensures that the three defendants will likely serve time in federal prison even in the event of legal problems in state court, where the three men have already been convicted on murder charges. But in symbolic terms, the potency of the verdict, and its potential for infusing future prosecutions, is even more significant.
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That the verdict came in Georgia – in the cradle of the South, in one of only a handful of states not to have its own hate-crime law prior to the Arbery killing – makes it even more significant.
Sporadic prosecution of hate crimes
As far as we know, the defendants weren't card-carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan. The trial revealed that they were run-of-the-mill racists, everyday bigots whose text messages and social media feeds were filled with horrific racist bravado. Prosecutors successfully argued that their "pent-up racial anger" led them to hunt down a Black man in the streets of their suburbs because they assumed he was up to no good.
"They saw a Black criminal, a subhuman savage,” the prosecutor said.
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The Justice Department has a long history of going into local jurisdictions, especially in the South, to try to enforce racial justice, starting with the Reconstruction era and accelerating at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
But federal prosecutions for hate crimes have been sporadic in recent years, even as Congress has put in place tougher laws, and prosecutions became rarer still during the Trump administration, according to data gathered by a Syracuse University program. Prosecutors never even brought cases in the vast majority – 82% – of criminal investigations referred to them for prosecution from 2005 to 2019, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland has pledged to make combating hate crimes a top priority. And a year into the Biden administration, the Arbery case was a critical test of that pledge – a test that the Justice Department almost bungled when it reached a tentative plea deal with the defendants that was denounced by Arbery's family as too lenient and rejected by the judge.
A turning point for racial justice
A loss at this month's hate-crimes trial, on the heels of that stinging rebuke over the rejected plea bargain, would have left a stench not only around the prosecution in Arbery's killing but also future prosecutions. Instead, the Arbery verdict is likely to be remembered as a crucial victory for civil rights – and a potential turning point – at a time of such wrenching debate in America over racial justice.
Garland, speaking to reporters in Washington immediately after the verdict, appeared close to tears Tuesday as he discussed the Arbery family's pain on the eve of the second anniversary of his death. "No one should fear that if they go out for a run, they will be targeted and killed because of the color of their skin," Garland said.
Hate crimes reported to the FBI have been soaring for the past six years, especially those targeting Asian Americans during COVID-19. And for every Arbery, there are many other victims of killings, violent assaults, arsons and vandalism whose cases attract little public notice. The verdict in Arbery's killing has the potential to bring new energy to future hate-crimes cases and bring some measure of justice for those anonymous victims, too.
Eric Lichtblau, a Pulitzer-winning journalist who's writing a book on hate crimes in America, is author of “Return To The Reich: A Holocaust Refugee's Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis.” Follow him on Twitter: @EricLichtblau
This column is part of a series by USA TODAY Opinion about police accountability and building safer communities. The project began in 2021 by examining qualified immunity and continues in 2022 by examining various ways to improve law enforcement. The project is made possible in part by a grant from Stand Together, which does not provide editorial input.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Guilty verdict in Arbery case sends message on hate crimes, justice
