Avowed neo-Nazi gets life in jail for ramming his car into protesters

In this August 12, 2017, file photo, people fly into the air as a vehicle is driven into a group of protesters in Charlottesville. Photo / Ryan Kelly, the Daily Progress, AP file

James Fields, the avowed neo-Nazi who rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters at a white-supremacists rally, has been sentenced to life in prison by a jury.

The sentence came after a trial that offered an unsparing view of the physical and emotional ruin he caused in Charlottesville with a burst of vehicular rage 16 month ago.

As he had throughout his two-week trial, Fields, 21, sat impassively at the defendant's table, clad in a powder blue sweater, as the jury delivered its punishment after about four hours of deliberations: Life for first-degree murder; 70 years for each of five counts of aggravated malicious wounding; 20 years for each of three counts of malicious wounding; and nine years for leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

His overall sentence: life plus 419 years and US$489,000 in fines.

The same jury of seven women and five men convicted Fields of those 10 offences last week in Charlottesville Circuit Court.

In Virginia, trial juries determine what penalties should be meted out within sentencing ranges dictated by law. Judge Richard Moore, who said he will formally sentence Fields on March 29, can impose a lesser punishment than the jurors called for but is not allowed to increase the sentences.

Fields, whose psychiatric disorders dating to early childhood were detailed in court by a mental health expert, did not deny that he intentionally accelerated his Dodge Challenger into a group of counterprotesters at the "Unite the Right" rally on August 12, 2017. His lawyers contended that he was afraid for his safety and acted to protect himself. But jurors, in issuing 10 guilty verdicts last week, rejected that argument.

One of the anti-racism demonstrators, Heather Heyer, 32, who worked for a local law firm, was killed in the crash and 35 others were hurt, many grievously.

Fields also faces a separate, federal trial for an array of alleged hate crimes related to the incident, including one offence that carries a possible death sentence. No trial date has been set in that case, and the Justice Department has not announced whether it will seek capital punishment.

In the meantime, Fields will wait in a state penitentiary, where an inmate who has served a certain amount of a sentence can petition for geriatric release after age 60. Otherwise, Virginia does not allow parole for felonies committed after the mid-1990s.

James Alex Fields. Photo / AP

Several of the injured survivors, testifying at Fields's trial and sentencing hearing here, described lasting bodily wounds, psychological anguish and financial distress.

They spoke of shattered bones and crippling nerve damage from which they might never fully recover; of nightmares and social isolation caused by post-traumatic stress disorder; and of crushing medical bills from multiple surgeries that have depleted their insurance and could burden them far into the future.

Heyer's mother, Susan Bro, told the jury that after her daughter's death, she had trouble finding a recent photo of her and Heyer. She said she realised that the two seldom posed for pictures together, thinking they did not need mementos, "because we just took it for granted that we'd be around for each other for years to come."

Four months after the deadly chaos at a downtown Charlottesville street corner, Bro said, she carried her artificial Christmas tree to a table in her home but could not muster the will to put it up. "This year, the trial has reopened the wounds," she testified, "and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get the tree out of the shed, frankly."

Hundreds of white supremacists descended on the city for the rally, nominally in support of Charlottesville's statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, which officials plan to take down if they win a pending lawsuit over the issue.

Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer, hugs her husband, Kent in front of Charlottesville Circuit Court. Photo / AP

Chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans as they marched in the streets, the white supremacists violently clashed with counterprotesters for hours. Photos and video of the mayhem - including images of broken bodies propelled in the air by Fields's speeding Dodge - were viewed worldwide, galvanising public attention on emboldened ethno-fascists in the early months of the Trump Administration.

Fields, who drove alone to the rally from his apartment in Maumee, Ohio, had long been fascinated by Nazi Germany, espousing admiration for the militarism and racial-purity doctrine of the Third Reich, acquaintances have said in interviews. But his ideology did not come up in testimony at the trial, which focused mainly on his actions that August afternoon and the devastating consequences for his victims.

Daniel Murrie, a University of Virginia psychologist who reviewed thousands of pages of Fields's school and mental health records, testified that Fields was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 6 and, as an adolescent, was found to be suffering from schizoid personality disorder. Murrie said Fields was housed in psychiatric facilities for three stretches before his 15th birthday.

He told the jury that Fields, who did not take the witness stand at the trial, has been given to angry, sometimes violent outbursts since before he was old enough to walk. A loner and social misfit, he washed out of Army basic training after graduating from high school, then worked low-end jobs, playing video games for dozens of hours a week, Murrie said.

But Murrie, whose court-ordered evaluation of Fields included about 14 hours of jailhouse interviews, testified that Fields did not meet Virginia's legal definition for not guilty by reason of insanity. And Fields did not mount such a defence.

To be acquitted on the basis of insanity, a defendant must show that he did not understand the difference between right and wrong at the time of the offence or was mentally unable to control his actions.