travis mcmichael and neighbor roddey bryan yesterday. saying in the eyes of the law, the motivation was race. that these men killed arbery because he was black. a judge rejected a plea deals from the mcmichaels on the hate crime charges after the trial after arbery s parents protested against it. saying it would be disrespect to let the men serve their sentences in a federal prison instead of a state prison. after chasing down arbery in their trucks and fatally and killing him in 2020. on the pandemic now, the number of new reported covid cases around the world has fallen 21% in the last week according to the world health organization. deaths fell about 8% around the world. listen, this is the first time we ve seen the numbers, weekly deaths, fall since january. this announcement marks the third consecutive week, third week in a row that cases have dropped. the omicron is still the overall
whit? steve, our thanks to you again. let s get right to abc s chief legal analyst dan abrams. and dan, two of the defendants, greg mcmichael and william bryan, were not found guilty of malice murder. but travis mcmichael was. could you explain those differences between the verdicts? yeah, the jurors basically assigned slightly different blame to the different defendants. travis mcmichael not only chased down ahmaud arbery, but he also was the one who shot and killed him. he was convicted of all the charges including the highest, malice murder. greg mcmichael, his dad, who was involved in chasing down arbery, came armed but didn t end up shooting him, was not convicted of that single count of malice murder, but of all the rest, including all the felony murder changes. and william bryan, the friend who was behind them, convicted of all the felony murder charges except for one, because apparently the jurors didn t believe that he was specifically