Lawyers representing the three White men convicted for the hate crime murder of Ahmaud Arbery are making a push in the U.S. appeals court to overturn their hate crime convictions. As per reports by FOX5 Atlanta, the trio's defense hinges on the claim that evidence of past racist comments does not sufficiently prove they pursued Arbery with racist intent when they chased him down and killed him in a Georgia subdivision.

The case that has captured the nation's attention since Arbery's killing on February 23, 2020, saw a protracted span of more than two months pass without arrests. It wasn't until a disturbing video filmed by William "Roddie" Bryan, one of the defendants, leaked online that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over and arrests were made, as stated in a CBS News article.

All three men were found guilty of murder in late 2021 by a Georgia state court, and federal court jurors convicted them on hate crimes and attempted kidnapping charges in early 2022. The jury determined the assailants targeted Arbery because he was Black. In their appeal, the lawyers for Gregory McMichael and Bryan argued that the presentation of over two dozen social media posts and text messages featuring racist language by the prosecution did not establish that racist motives were behind the pursuit of Arbery.

Technicalities form the backbone of the appeal strategy. Travis McMichael's lawyer, Amy Lee Copeland, did not contest the conclusion by the jury that racism motivated his actions. However, she argued that the streets of the Satilla Shores subdivision could not be confirmed as public, undermining the hate crime charges as laid out in the indictment, according to information shared by FOX5 Atlanta. Additionally, the defense contends that the attempted kidnapping charge was not appropriate since the trucks used were not employed as an "instrumentality of interstate commerce," a necessary criterion for such a federal offense.

Despite these efforts, all three men are still facing extended sentences. The McMichaels each received life in prison for their federal hate crime convictions, along with additional years for firearms offenses. Bryan, involved but unarmed during the incident, received a lighter 35-year sentence for hate crimes, having also preserved the cellphone footage critical to the case. Even if the appeal leads to overturned federal convictions, all three will remain in prison serving Georgia state life sentences for murder, with motions for new state trials still pending. Prosecutors maintain that the evident racist attitudes and assumptions of the defendants justify the hate crime convictions, asserting the men's intent to enact vigilante justice, regardless of the myriad defenses mounted by their lawyers.