The judge also denied a request by the two white men to serve their sentences in a federal prison instead of a correctional facility in southern Georgia. Meanwhile, a neighbor of the McMichaels who took part in the hunt for Arbery has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.
The three white men followed Arbery with two cars on February 23, 2020 in a suburb of Brunswick, Georgia, because they suspected he was a burglar. In a scuffle that followed, Travis McMichael, who was armed with a rifle, shot the 25-year-old unarmed African American man.
The case only became public two and a half months later with the release of a cell phone video of the chase and Arbery's death. The recordings caused outrage across the country. Arbery - along with the blacks George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killed by police officers - became a symbol of the Black Lives Matter protests against racism in the USA.
The three attackers were initially sentenced to life imprisonment in a state-level murder trial in January this year. In the subsequent second trial at federal level, the focus - unlike in the first trial - was on an alleged racist motivation of the perpetrators. The prosecution argued that the men had hunted Arbery because of the color of his skin. Such double procedures are rare in the United States, but possible.
The McMichaels are already serving life sentences without parole. Her neighbor William Bryan was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
