Attorneys are asking a U.S. appeals court to throw out the hate crime convictions of three White men who used pickup trucks to chase Ahmaud Arbery through the streets of a Georgia subdivision before one of them killed the running Black man with a shotgun.

A panel of judges from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that followed a national outcry over Arbery’s death. The men’s lawyers argue that evidence of past racist comments they made didn’t prove a racist intent to harm.

  • Beefy-Tootz@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Correction, it’s only unconstitutional if it’s also really weird. The rule prevents punishments that are both cruel and unusual, not cruel or unusual