ATLANTA (AP) – Attorneys are asking a U.S. Court of Appeals to overturn the hate crime convictions of three white men who used pickup trucks to chase Ahmaud Arbery through the streets of a county in Georgia before considered one of them killed the fleeing black man with a shotgun.

A panel of judges from the eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was scheduled to listen to oral arguments Wednesday within the case that followed nationwide protests over Arbery’s death. Lawyers for the white men argue that evidence of racist comments they’ve made prior to now doesn’t prove racist intent to harm.

On February 23, 2020, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves with guns and chased Arbery after they spotted a 25-year-old man running through their neighborhood outside the port city of Brunswick. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the chase in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery on the street.

More than two months passed with no arrests until Bryan’s graphic video of the killing was leaked onto the Internet and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. Charges were soon filed.

All three men were sentenced in a Georgia state court in late 2021.

In legal documents filed ahead of the appeals court hearings, lawyers for Greg McMichael and Bryan cited prosecutors’ use of greater than two dozen social media posts and text messages, in addition to witness statements, showing that every one three men used racial slurs or otherwise disparaged Black people.

Bryan’s attorney, Pete Theodocion, said Bryan’s past racist statements angered the jury while failing to prove that Arbery was prosecuted due to his race. According to AJ Balbo, Greg McMichael’s lawyer, Arbery was pursued since the three men wrongly suspected he was a fugitive.

Greg McMichael gave chase when Arbery ran past his house, saying he recognized a young black man from security footage that in previous months had shown him entering a neighboring house under construction. None of the videos showed him stealing, and Arbery was unarmed and had no stolen property when he was killed.

In written submissions, prosecutors said trial evidence showed “long-standing hatred and prejudice against black people” that influenced defendants to consider Arbery had committed crimes.

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In Travis McMichael’s appeal, attorney Amy Lee Copeland didn’t dispute the jury’s finding that he was motivated by racism. Social media evidence features a 2018 Facebook comment by Travis McMichael on a video of a black man pranking a white person. He used an expletive and a racial slur, writing: “I might kill it…. “

Instead, Copeland based her appeal on legal details. She said prosecutors didn’t prove that the streets of Satilla Shores County, where Arbery was killed, were public roads, as stated within the indictment used to charge the lads.

Copeland cited records from a 1958 meeting of Glynn County commissioners through which they refused to take the streets over to the district’s developer. During the trial, prosecutors relied on service request records and district official testimony to point out that district officials cared in regards to the streets.

Lawyers for the three also presented technical arguments for overturning their attempted kidnapping convictions. Prosecutors said the charge was warranted because the lads used pickup trucks to chop off Arbery from fleeing the realm.

Defense attorneys said the fees were improper because their clients weren’t attempting to capture Arbery for ransom or other advantage and the trucks weren’t getting used as a “tool of interstate commerce.” Both elements are required for attempted kidnapping to be a federal crime.

Prosecutors said other federal appellate districts have ruled that any automotive utilized in the hijacking qualifies as an instrument of interstate commerce. They also said that the profit the lads sought was “the satisfaction of their personal desires and the administration of vigilante justice.”

The trial judge sentenced each McMichaels to life in prison for the hate crimes and an extra sentence – 10 years for Travis McMichael and 7 years for his father – for brandishing a gun while committing violent crimes. Bryan received a lighter sentence for the hate crime of 35 years in prison, partly because he was unarmed and retained a cellphone video that became key evidence.

The three also received 20 years in prison for the attempted kidnapping, however the judge ordered that this time run concurrently with their hate crime sentences.

If either of the federal sentences is overturned by a U.S. appeals court, each the McMichaels and Bryan will remain in prison. All three are serving life sentences in Georgia state prisons for murder, and motions for a brand new state trial are pending before a judge.