Lawyer: Arbery shooter fears he’ll be killed in state prison

By RUSS BYNUM
Associated Press

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery after chasing him in a Georgia neighborhood says he’s afraid fellow inmates will kill him if he’s sent to a state prison to serve a life sentence for murder. That’s according to a legal filing by Travis McMichael’s defense attorney that asks a judge to keep McMichael in federal custody when he’s sentenced Monday on a hate crime conviction. Attorney Amy Lee Copeland wrote that McMichael has received hundreds of death threats since he killed Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, in February 2020. She says McMichael worries “he will promptly be killed” in a Georgia prison system that the Justice Department is investigating for violence between inmates.