Vox Sentences - Ahmaud Arbery's murderers found guilty

Jurors reached a guilty verdict in the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial; Europe's Covid-19 cases are climbing. 

Sentences will be off for the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, November 25, and Friday, November 26. We'll be back Monday, November 29.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes. 

Guilty verdict for Ahmaud's murderers

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

• Three white men were found guilty in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man they pursued while he was on a jog in February 2020. The case, along with the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the killings of many other Black Americans, sparked a massive protest movement in the US over the past 18 months. [AP / Russ Bynum]
• Travis McMichael, his father Gregory McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan were found guilty at the Glynn County Courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia, near where they had pursued and shot Arbery, who was 25 at the time of his murder. The jury found Travis McMichael guilty of one count of malice murder, among other charges; Gregory McMichael and Bryan were found not guilty of malice murder, but guilty of other crimes including felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal attempt to commit a felony. [NPR / Merrit Kennedy and Jaclyn Diaz]
• The three men have not yet been sentenced, and their sentencing date wasn’t known at the time of writing. Prosecutors could ask for life in prison without parole for the three men. [CNN]
• Arbery was murdered in the Satilla Shores neighborhood, near Brunswick, Georgia, on February 23, 2020. The McMichaels pursued him in their truck with their firearms, shooting and killing him after he refused to speak to them; Bryan recorded the attack, and his video went viral, leading to massive public outcry and the arrest of the three men. [NYT]
• Arbery, a former high school football star and regular runner, made it 2.23 miles on his run that day in February before his murder. Around 1:00 pm, Arbery paused and wandered into a house under construction; the McMichaels claimed that they chased and killed him because they suspected him of burglary and were attempting a citizen's arrest. [Washington Post]
• Arbery’s family, and many other Black citizens, marked the day as a momentous occasion in the American legal system; his mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, nodded as the guilty verdicts were read. The White House also released a statement from President Joe Biden mourning Arbery, celebrating the verdict, and making an appeal for continued work to rectify the justice system. [BuzzFeed / Salvador Hernandez]
• In the wake of the murder, Georgia repealed its slavery-era citizen's arrest laws, which were created to detain enslaved people trying to flee from slave owners and under which the McMichaels said they were attempting to waylay Arbery. But similar laws are still on the books in many states. [Vox / Fabiola Cineas]

European Covid-19 cases breaking records

• Several European countries, including Hungary, the Netherlands, and Slovakia, are posting record-breaking numbers of Covid-19 infections despite the availability of vaccines. As in the early days of the virus, Europe is once again a pandemic hot spot. [Reuters / Francesco Guarascio and Jason Hovet]
• The World Health Organization has warned that Covid-19 will be the leading cause of death in its designated Europe region, warning of the potential for 700,000 more deaths in parts of Asia and its Europe region by March 2022. Recently, confirmed daily Covid-19 deaths there have reached 4,200. [BBC]
• Many countries, like Austria and Slovakia, have enacted stricter measures to curb Covid-19 cases, including lockdowns and banning the unvaccinated from public places like restaurants and bars. Vaccination rates range from 75 percent in Belgium to 24 percent in Bulgaria. [NYT / Steven Erlanger]
• But despite these countries’ efforts to keep cases down, protests against the restrictions continue in the Netherlands, Austria, and across Europe. [NPR / Sharon Pruitt-Young]

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Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is now at the battlefront as opposition forces head to the capital of Addis Ababa, according to a government spokesperson and state media. [AP / Cara Anna]

• Sweden’s first female prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, resigned just hours after being voted in, according to Sweden’s official Twitter account. [CNN / Amy Cassidy and Niamh Kennedy]
• The January 6 congressional select committee subpoenaed leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers on Tuesday. [Select committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the US Capitol]

• The White House announced that 92 percent of federal workers and members of the military have complied with the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate. [AP / Zeke Miller and Colleen Long]

“He will now rest in peace.”

[Wanda Cooper-Jones, Ahmaud Arbery’s mother, invoking her son after his murderers were found guilty on Wednesday]

Dylan talks to Chye-Ching Huang, the executive director of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, about the many tax provisions in Democrats’ Build Back Better package.[Spotify]

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