NY Times: “A federal judge on Monday rejected plea agreements with the Justice Department for two of the three white men facing hate crime charges in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery after his family expressed fierce opposition to the deal.It was a surprising and extraordinary twist in a case in which a 25-year-old Black man was chased through a southern Georgia neighborhood by three white men and then shot to death. The plea deals would have been the first time that any of the men had admitted that Mr. Arbery’s killing was racially motivated.
All three men had been convicted of murder in state court in November. Mr. Arbery’s family angrily objected to the federal plea agreement because it would have sent at least two of them immediately to federal prison instead of state prison for up to 30 years. Federal prison is generally considered safer than state prison.
The decision by Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of U.S. District Court to reject identical plea deals hammered out between the Justice Department and the two men, Travis McMichael, 36, and his father, Gregory McMichael, 66, means that the McMichaels could now see their federal case go before a jury as early as next week.
The third man involved in the chase, William Bryan, 52, was sentenced in state court to life with the possibility of parole. As of Monday evening, there was no indication that he had reached a plea deal with the Justice Department.”