Tag: August 12

Categories
News

Day 7: Witnesses describe Fields’ arrest

The prosecution rested today in the trial of James Alex Fields Jr. and the defense began its case, both sides focusing on the defendant during and after his arrest August 12, 2017.

In prosecution videos of Fields after he was taken into police custody, he repeatedly apologized, asked about any injuries, and hyperventilated for more than two minutes during his interrogation. The jury also heard recordings of two phone calls from jail between Fields and his mother, in which he seemed much less apologetic.

In a December 7, 2017, call, Fields can be heard asking his mom an unintelligible question about “that one girl who died.” We can assume that this is Heather Heyer, whom he’s on trial for murdering when he drove his gray Dodge Challenger into a crowd on Fourth Street.

He then mentions that Heyer’s mother has been giving “speeches and shit,” and “slandering” him. “She’s one of those anti-white communists,” Fields says on the recording. And his mother, seemingly reacting to his insensitivity, points out that Heyer died, and that her mother loved her.

Responds Fields, “It doesn’t fucking matter, she’s a communist. It’s not up for questioning. She is. She’s the enemy.”

In a March 21, 2018, phone call between Fields and his mom, Fields complained that he was “not doing anything wrong” on August 12, “and then I get mobbed by a violent group of terrorist for defending my person.”

And he claimed “antifa” were waving ISIS flags at the Unite the Right rally. His mom expressed some kind of intelligible dissent, and suggested he stop talking. “They’re communist, mother, they do support them,” he countered.

Also entered into evidence were text messages between Fields and his mom before the rally. On August 8, he told her he’d gotten the weekend off to go to the rally, and on August 10, she responded with, “Be careful.” And on August 11, he said, “We’re not the [ones] who need to be careful.” He attached an image of Adolf Hitler along with it.

Before resting his case, Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania also played bodycam footage from Detective Steve Young, who appeared on the scene of Monticello Avenue and Blenheim Road as Fields was being detained.

In the audio of the interaction, Fields appeared to be cooperating with police, and repeated multiple iterations of “I’m sorry.”

When Young asked what he was sorry for, he said, “I didn’t want to hurt people, but I thought they were attacking me. …Even if they are [unintelligible], I still feel bad for them. They’re still people.”

He said he had an empty suitcase—”a family heirloom”—in his trunk, and asked police not to throw it away.

Fields also indicated leg pain, and when asked if he needed medical attention, he said, “I’d prefer if they see to the people who were rioting.”

He asked multiple times about any injuries sustained when he drove his car into the crowd on Fourth Street. And once he was taken to the Charlottesville Police Department for interrogation, he finally got his answer.

“There are people with severe injuries. I know one has passed away,” answered Detective Brady Kirby, as heard on the recording. For the next two or three minutes, Fields can be heard hyperventilating. He simultaneously cries while struggling to breathe.

At this point in the courtroom, Fields sat hunched over between his two attorneys, watching the video intently and quickly flicking his pen back and forth. Usually seated to the right of his lawyers, he traded places with one of them for a clearer view.  

Once at the local jail, Fields could be heard telling the magistrate in another recording that as he pulled onto Fourth Street, he had his GPS turned on and he was just trying to go home. He saw two cars stopped at the bottom of the street and began backing up. He said he felt a “really weird” emotion once he saw the counterprotesters.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he said, and never mentioned driving into them.

He also requested to have his face washed before getting his mugshot taken.

After the commonwealth rested, defense attorney John Hill moved to strike all of the charges against his client except for the hit-and-run. He said the prosecutors failed to prove that Fields showed intent to kill and actual malice. But Judge Rick Moore overruled the motions, and said, “I don’t know what intent he could have had other than to kill people.”

The defense called four witnesses, including Deputy Paul Critzer, who chased Fields in his cruiser and eventually cuffed him.

Critzer said he followed Fields for almost a mile, and Fields eventually pulled over on Monticello Avenue. The deputy then instructed him to put his hands outside the window, and started moving toward the Challenger when Fields drew his hands back inside and smashed on the gas. Critzer then chased him for what he described as less than a football field of length before Fields stopped again, and following Critzer’s commands, he threw his hands and keys outside of his window.

That’s when Critzer approached him from the passenger side—another officer had met Fields on the driver’s side—and slapped the cuffs on him.

Deputy Fred Kirschnick described Fields as “very quiet” “very wide-eyed” and “sweating profusely,” as he waited to be taken to the police department for questioning. He smelled a “light to moderate” stench of urine on Fields, which matches the description of a yellow stain on his shirt that others had testified to.

Lunsford also called city officer Tammy Shifflet, who was stationed at the intersection of Fourth and Market streets that morning, and who left her post before the car attack because things had gotten too chaotic.

She said she called her commander to ask for assistance, and he directed her to meet up with other officers. There was a small barricade she described as a “sawhorse” blocking Fourth Street when she left.

The defense is expected to call approximately eight more witnesses. Closing arguments could happen Thursday with a jury verdict as soon as Friday, according to the judge.

Categories
News

Day 6: How Heather died—Witnesses detail severity of injuries

Marissa Blair Martin initially was unsure if she wanted to go downtown the weekend of the Unite the Right rally in 2017.  However, after the tiki-torch march through UVA Grounds on August 11, she changed her mind. She and her then-fiance, Marcus Martin, decided, “We had to so stand up for our community,” she testified in Charlottesville Circuit Court December 3.

Another reason she went was disbelief at such overt racism in 2017. “I had to see it with my own eyes,” she said.

Martin went with her friends from work, Courtney Commander and Heather Heyer, the latter of whom had parked at McDonalds, the same place the man accused of murdering her, James Alex Fields Jr., had parked earlier August 12.

Heyer was “very passionate,” easy to be around, and “very compassionate,” said Blair. “Heather was always outspoken. She was not argumentative but she tried to understand” where other people were coming from.

The four friends had joined a joyous group walking on Water Street. Blair decided to Snapchat the event. “I wanted everyone to see how happy everything was that day,” she said. “It was not all hate.”

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony played Blair’s video. Although not visible from the gallery, whoops, whistles, a drumbeat and the chant of “Whose streets? Our streets” could be heard in the courtroom.

Antony stopped the video and asked Blair about the woman with a long braid in front of her in the video. It was Heyer—and it was probably the last image of her alive.

In a split second, the scene went from happiness to “complete chaos,” said Martin. Screams could be heard on the video and Martin was yelling, “Marcus, Marcus!” She told the jury about being unable to find him in the “moments of terror” after the attack. “I saw the red baseball cap he was wearing and it had blood all over it.”

Nick Barrell, a captain with the Charlottesville Fire Department, was in charge of the station on Ridge Street August 12. He estimates that when he was dispatched to Fourth and Water streets, it took about two minutes to get there, he testified. What he didn’t know from the message he’d received—”Female struck by a car”—was the full extent of devastation that awaited him at the scene.

When he arrived, people were already performing CPR on Heyer. He noted a “very large contusion on her chest,” he said. “When you see bruising immediately after a trauma, that’s very serious.” Heyer, he said, had multi-system trauma with no palpable pulse and “she was not breathing on her own.”

Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Jennifer Nicole Bowers performed the autopsy on Heyer, and said blunt force trauma to the torso was the cause of death. Heyer’s thoracic aorta—the largest in the body—”was snapped in half,” said Bowers.

Heyer suffered multiple other internal injuries, including fractured ribs that lacerated her lungs and liver, and a broken leg.

DNA analyst Kristin van Itallie testified that Heyer’s blood and tissue were on samples she tested taken from the windshield and side mirror of Fields’ dark gray Dodge Challenger.

Dean Dotts, the second officer on the scene after James Fields was stopped at the corner of Monticello and Blenheim, testified the Dodge Challenger “appeared to be a crime scene.” trial photo

Witness Thomas Baker is a conservation biologist who had just moved to Charlottesville in May 2017. “I’m not an activist, but I wanted to be present against the hate that was going on,” he said.

Baker, too, joined the “joyous” group walking up Water Street. “The energy was very positive,” he said, compared to that earlier in the day when it was “very aggressive, very violent.”

By the time the group turned left onto Fourth Street, Baker was at the front of the group “I heard screaming and thumps,” he testified. “I saw bodies and a car directly in front of me. I was sure it was my very last second.”

The car hit the lower half of Baker’s body. His head hit the windshield and threw him up in the air and then onto the ground. When he saw the reverse lights on Fields’ car, he thought, “I’m not going to survive getting hit again,” and got up.

Baker knew he was seriously injured, but he wasn’t sure what his health insurance would cover. Initially his doctor recommended he try physical therapy, but after more than a month, when that didn’t work, he had surgery that put four screws in his hip, permanent sutures, reattached the labrum to the hip, and reshaped the femur head.

Before August 12, he said, “I’ve been an athlete, a really good athlete my whole life.”

Now he has significant discomfort and doesn’t run at all. The crash “altered every aspect of my life physically,” he said. “Every aspect of my life has been dramatically changed.”

Testimony on Day 6 of the three-week trial ended early, and according to Judge Rick Moore, “the commonwealth is very confident it will rest before lunch tomorrow.”

Correction December 4: Thomas Baker does have health insurance. It was originally reported he did not.

Correction December 5: Baker’s doctor recommended he try physical therapy first and that’s why he didn’t immediately have surgery.

 

Categories
News

Day 5: More victim and police testimony in James Fields’ trial

“That’s what someone’s eyes look like when they’re dead,” is the only thought that went through anti-racist activist Star Peterson’s mind as she saw Heather Heyer flying through the air.

Peterson had just been run over by a white supremacist in a Dodge Challenger on Fourth Street on August 12, 2017.

Peterson recounted her experience in testimony on the second day of evidence presented to the jury in the trial against James Fields, who’s charged with first-degree murder for killing Heyer, along with five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of hit and run.

His attorneys have not disputed that he was the one driving the car that barrelled into the crowd that day, smashing into a parked Toyota Camry, which then crashed into a Honda Odyssey, before Fields backed up—running over Peterson and others again—and sped off.

Tadrint Washington, who drove the Camry, didn’t realize she’d been hit. She was caught up in the excitement of the activists joyfully chanting, singing, and claiming victory over the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who came to town to hold their Unite the Right rally that day.

“I never seen so many white people standing up for black people,” she testified. But then she heard a “big, big, big noise,” and “thought a bomb went off.” That was when the Challenger hit her.

She’d seen the car before. While describing the process of navigating around the downtown area, which had numerous road closures for the rally, she said the Challenger was right behind her. “Every turn I make, he’s making the same turns because the roads are blocked off,” she said. And as they were crossing the Downtown Mall on Fourth Street, she saw him stop and start backing up. She assumed this was because the oncoming crowd and the minivan already stopped at the bottom of the street meant it would be a while before any of the vehicles could proceed.

But once Fields slammed on the gas and hit her, she said, she believes she lost consciousness for a few moments. When she regained her vision, she said, “I remember opening my eyes and seeing someone on top of my car, and it freaked me out.”

Minutes before, Lizete Short, the driver of the Odyssey, had stopped her car where Fourth Street meets Water Street to let the crowd of demonstrators pass in front of her. When they turned up Fourth Street, streaming past her van on both sides, she parked and got out to capture a moment she said she was sure would go down in history.

But the next thing she knew, her camera phone was knocked out of her hand, her van had collided into her, she had been propelled onto its hood, and was “being dragged across the street.”

Wednesday Bowie, another victim, testified that she was knocked into a parked truck as the Challenger backed up.

“I got hung up on the trunk of the car. I remember thinking ‘okay, I’m getting hit by a car,’” she said, adding that she lost consciousness after smashing into the truck and being thrown several additional feet onto the ground.

Her pelvis was broken in six places, and a fragmented piece of it sliced her femoral artery, she said.

“I was bleeding out internally as I waited for the ambulance,” she told the jury, adding that she required emergency surgery at UVA. On her second day in the hospital, she had a metal bar called an external fixator drilled through her lower half to hold her pelvis in place.

She also suffered a fractured orbital socket on one side of her face, a broken tailbone, three broken vertebrae, multiple lacerations, and road rash. Her pelvis healed diagonally, so her gait is permanently affected, and her steps are now uneven.

The jury also heard from former Daily Progress photojournalist Ryan Kelly, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his iconic photo of the car hightailing it into the crowd. He described being on Fourth Street and seeing the Challenger stop midway down the street and start backing up.

“I heard screeching tires, the rev of an engine,” and then the car sped past him into the group of protesters. “People went flying. You heard thuds and screams and cries.”

Charlottesville Police Department Detective Jeremy Carper testified there were many “reddish brown stains,” or blood, found all over the Challenger, including on the windshield, the grill, the bumper, and on the Fourth Street asphalt. He also identified swabs of “soft tissue along the windshield” of the car.

The detective was assigned to hand out water and snacks to cops who were working that day, but was asked to respond to Monticello Avenue shortly after the car attack, where police took Fields into custody for a hit and run. That’s where Carper collected a water bottle that was likely thrown into the car during the commotion on Fourth Street, and a pair of sunglasses lodged under the rear spoiler.

He wore black gloves as he handled the evidence in court. He opened a brown bag with red tape to reveal the water bottle, and left the sunglasses inside their bag. The car’s grill was also present in the courtroom, wrapped in brown paper.

Carper said he then went to Fourth Street where he recovered the Challenger’s passenger side mirror, which was also covered in blood, and Heyer’s pants, which he said were cut in half as medics tried to revive her.

As Fields listened to the day’s testimony, he scribbled a few notes into a notepad. His face was expressionless. He wore a blue suit and black tie.

After introducing it in yesterday’s opening arguments, today prosecutors made available to the public a meme that Fields posted on Instagram on May 16, 2017, which shows a car plowing into a crowd of people, and says, “You have the right to protest but I’m late for work.”

The defense has argued that the meme is not political in nature. We’ll see what the jury thinks about that.

James Fields, who racked up 10 state charges after driving his car into a crowd on August 12, 2017, posted this meme on Instagram three months earlier. Courtesy of the city of Charlottesville
Categories
News

Day 4: Jury seated, testimony begins in James Fields’ trial

It took three long days to seat a jury of 12 with four alternates. After all, it’s a national story and the video and photographs of a Dodge Challenger plowing into a group of counterprotesters have been viewed over and over.

The defense does not dispute that James Alex Fields Jr., 21, was driving the car that accelerated down Fourth Street August 12, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more. Trickier is explaining why Fields is not guilty of first-degree murder, five counts of aggravated malicious wounding and three of malicious wounding.

In opening statements today, the legal teams laid out their arguments to the jurors.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony described a crowd of joyful counterprotesters marching down Water Street and turning left onto Fourth Street after the Unite the Right rally had been declared an unlawful assembly. She also noted Fields, who had turned onto Fourth, was “idling,” and “watching” the crowd of people on the other side of the Downtown Mall.

“Suddenly there is a screech,” Antony told the jurors. “People in the front of the crowd start diving.”

Heyer, “is directly in his path. She is unable to get out of the way. Her blood and her flesh” are on his car, she said.

“This is about what his intent was,” said Antony, promising to present evidence about Fields’ actions before, during and after the carnage.

Jurors learned that Fields left his home in Maumee, Ohio, August 11, 2017, and drove 500 miles through the night to arrive around 3am in Charlottesville to attend the Unite the Right rally, which featured marquee names of the alt-right, neo-Nazi, and white supremacist movements.

He brought no suitcase, no shampoo, and had no hotel reservation, according to his attorney John Hill. The only change of clothes he brought was a white polo shirt and long pants. “It was the uniform of the day,” said Hill.

Hill suggested that fear of serious bodily injury instigated Fields’ actions. Fields had been given a hard time from some counterprotesters, and “anger, fear, and rumors” were swirling around that day. “We’ll tell you why Mr. Fields is not guilty,” he said.

But he didn’t, in the opinion of defense attorney Janice Redinger, who watched opening statements from the auxiliary courtroom on Levy Avenue.

“It’s most critical for the defense to put out their narrative” in the opening statements, she says. Whether it’s that Fields was scared or it was in self defense, “I didn’t get the story,” she says. Typically the defense tells jurors, “You’re going to hear evidence and reasons why it wasn’t premeditated.”

She adds, “You have to grab the jury from the get go.”

Redinger thinks Antony did a good job in her opening. “It’s telling a story,” she says.

She also applauds the commonwealth’s decision to use Michael Webster, who was not a counterprotester and “was going to lunch,” as its first witness. Webster negated the defense’s suggestion that Fields was threatened by testifying that the mall was deserted and no one was near his car.

Antony referred to the Unite the Right rally as a “political rally” that brought people to town to promote a “conservative ideology.”

“I was disappointed it wasn’t a little more hard hitting,” says Redinger. The neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology “was the whole reason for the rally.”

Antony did promise jurors they will see two images from Instagram Fields had posted in May 2017—that of a car running into a crowd of people.

The judge allowed the admission of two similar images of a car driving into a crowd James Fields posted on Instagram.

The prosecution called seven witnesses, four of whom were victims of the car attack. Most heartrending was Marcus Martin, the man who was shown being catapulted over Fields’ car in Ryan Kelly’s famous photograph.

Martin was visibly emotional on the witness stand. Antony handed him a box of tissues, and Judge Rick Moore instructed, “Mr. Martin, take a deep breath.”

Martin knew Heyer from his fiancee, Marissa Blair, and friend Courtney Commander, both of whom worked with Heyer. In the difficult-to-hear Charlottesville Circuit Court, it sounded like he said Heyer “is a great person.”

Brennan Gilmore, who videoed the Challenger accelerating down Fourth Street, testified that he’d been documenting the day and was standing on the mall when he heard the sound of a vehicle “traveling very, very fast” for the Downtown Mall crossing.  “I heard a sickening sound and saw bodies flying everywhere,” he said.

Gilmore was a foreign service officer in the State Department for 15 years, and said he had training in “high-threat environments.” He’d felt no threat on Fourth Street before the attack.

Charlottesville native Brian Henderson works for the city in the Department of Social Services and he thought he should be in his hometown August 12 after being out of town July 8, 2017, when the Ku Klux Klan staged a protest here. He walked throughout the city that day, and said that in the afternoon, “It was a better feeling than in the morning.”

Henderson had become part of the group that turned onto Fourth Street. He pulled out his phone when he heard “someone singing ‘Lean On Me’ and they didn’t know the words,” he testified.

Into that celebratory zone, Fields’ Challenger zoomed. “I tried to put my arms up and fly like Superman,” Henderson testified.

When asked to identify himself in images of the attack, the box of tissues came back to the witness stand. “Forgive me,” he said. “It’s just a little hard to look at.”

What Henderson initially thought was a broken left arm turned out to be much more serious, with a severed nerve. He also suffered four broken ribs.

Fields, who wore a navy pullover sweater and collared shirt, sat impassively as Henderson, Martin, and two other witnesses described their injuries.

Susan Bro, front right, comes to Charlottesville Circuit Court for her daughter’s murder trial. Eze Amos

The trial is expected to last three weeks. Judge Moore instructed jurors to not go to Fourth and Water streets. He also warned both the public and media that no one should approach jurors, who are identified in court by numbers, or take photos of them. “If anyone snaps your photo, let me know,” he told the jury.

Heyer’s mother Susan Bro, who’s become an activist since her daughter was killed, was in court, just back from talking to Congress and telling its members to “count” because “Charlottesville is not in the numbers of hate crimes.”

Gil Harrington, founder of Help Save the Next Girl and mother of Morgan Harrington, who died at the hands of serial murderer Jesse Matthew, also was present. She said she has an affinity for supporting the mothers of “murdered girls in Charlottesville.”

Categories
News

Center of conspiracy: Defamation suit targets Alex Jones

Elizabeth Wydra (center), president of D.C.’s Constitutional Accountability Center, says defendants can’t hide behind the First Amendment when alleging bogus conspiracy theories about her client, local man Brennan Gilmore (right), to a national audience. Staff photo

Infowars founder Alex Jones has made a career out of broadcasting anti-government and right-wing conspiracy theories on his website and various radio shows. Last year, he put local man Brennan Gilmore in his crosshairs, alleging that the Charlottesville musician is a deep state operative on George Soros’ personal payroll who helped orchestrate the August 12, 2017, car attack. But Gilmore is fighting back with a federal defamation lawsuit, which he filed last spring.

Attorneys for Jones and multiple other defendants were in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia on November 13 to argue motions to dismiss the lawsuit. They say Gilmore’s crew filed the lawsuit in the wrong court, and moreover, that their clients’ actions were protected by the First Amendment.

If Gilmore’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s taken on several roles across town, including playing guitar in Wild Common, being Tom Perriello’s chief of staff during the Democrat’s gubernatorial run, and filming a video that immediately went viral of a Dodge Challenger ramming into a group of counterprotesters at the August 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally.

It’s that video that has made him a target for right-wing conspiracy theories allegedly created by Jones and other defendants, who are listed as Lee Stranahan, Lee Ann McAdoo, Scott Creighton, James Hoft, Derrick Wilburn, former Florida Republican congressman Allen B. West, and Free Speech Systems, LLC.

Defense attorney Andrew Grossman drew specific attention to an August 15 interview of former Breitbart News employee Stranahan by Infowars reporter McAdoo, in which they suggest that Gilmore’s involvement in the car attack was intended to stage a coup to overthrow the president.

Grossman, who came from Washington, D.C., called it “the kind of exaggerated rhetoric that can not be taken literally,” and suggested that such hyperbole is often used in the news.

But the plaintiffs don’t agree, and allege that Jones’ claims of thorough fact-checking can’t be true.

“Fact-based journalism is essential to our democracy, because it provides citizens with objective, reality-based information on issues of public concern,” says their lawsuit. “Defendants are not fact-based journalists. Defendants spread lies to construct false narratives that terrify a gullible audience, all in a desperate attempt to generate revenue and momentum for a hateful agenda.”

Grossman said plaintiffs were drawing their own conclusions about what Jones meant by some of his statements. “That’s not how defamation works,” the attorney said. “You can’t sue someone over an alleged interpretation.”

He also said that because Gilmore is a public figure, the judge must find that defendants committed actual malice to classify their statements as defamatory.

But Elizabeth Wydra, who is the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center in D.C. and one of several attorneys representing Gilmore, said it was the defendants who made Gilmore a public figure by their outrageous claims against him.

Outside the courthouse, she said, “We shouldn’t have everyday citizens dragged through the mud—dragged into the spotlight—simply because they happened to witness something that is of public interest.”

She said folks like Jones and other defendants shouldn’t be able to hide behind the First Amendment when they publish “terrible claims,” such as the one connecting her client to the murder of Heather Heyer.

“The law does not protect that,” says Wydra. “There are consequences when you speak and act in a way that creates harm to a person like Mr. Gilmore, who suffered threats. He’s suffered harassment, he’s suffered harm to his reputation.”

Added Gilmore, “I just want to ensure that the next person who finds himself in that position, they don’t have to suffer the same injury. That’s why we’re here today.”

Manassas-based defense attorney Aaron Walker, who represents about half a dozen of the defendants, told reporters that a ruling in favor of Gilmore could be the beginning of the “death of the freedom of the press.”

“This is a dangerous case, to be blunt,” said Walker, and taking a dig at the plaintiffs’ stance on his clients, he said, “They just don’t like their opinions.”

To be fair, neither does he. On the topic of Jones, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has called “the most prolific conspiracy theorist in America,” he said, “I dislike him, personally.”

Judge Norman Moon has not yet ruled on whether the lawsuit will proceed. Jones, meanwhile, is embroiled in multiple other defamation lawsuits filed by relatives of children killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, after Jones falsely claimed that the shooting was staged by the government and that the parents of the murdered children were “crisis actors.”

Categories
News

Not healed: August 12 survivors ask for help

Tay Washington, who was sitting in her car on Fourth Street when it was struck by James Fields’ car on August 12, 2017, spoke at an event to raise money for Heal Charlottesville, which provides financial assistance to victims of the attack. EZE AMOS

By Jonathan Haynes

The vaulted sanctuary of First United Methodist Church fell silent Friday night as survivors of the vehicular assault that killed Heather Heyer spoke one by one about their paths to recovery. Survivors organized the event to raise money for Heal Charlottesville, a local charity that provides financial assistance to people harmed by Unite the Right protesters on August 11 and 12, 2017.

Kendall Bills, the evening’s emcee, opened the November 9 event by recounting the concussion she sustained after a Nazi punched her in the face. She warned that speakers would be describing white supremacist violence and would not take questions, then she reminded the audience that donation boxes were stationed on the lectern and near all the exits.

Victims recalled the assault in graphic detail. Tay Washington, an EMT, was sitting in her car on Fourth Street when it was struck by James Fields’ car. “I heard a big noise, like a bomb had gone off, then I opened my eyes and saw people tumbling over the car,” she said, embracing her sister as tears trickled down her cheeks.

She also said that, as someone from Mississippi, she wasn’t used to seeing so many white people show up in support of black Americans.

Many survivors said they were initially hesitant to accept financial help from Heal Charlottesville. Another victim, Lisa, who did not give her last name, said she felt like she did not deserve money from the fund, but was prompted to accept it after she realized her insurance only covered 30 physical therapy sessions.

“When you feel like you’re not paying for yourself, you worry about becoming a problem,” said Washington, who has not been able to return to work. “It feels wrong to go and ask for more because you found a new doctor.”

The inability to return to work was a common theme. Star Peterson, who suffered injuries in one of her ribs, two parts of her back, and both of her legs, hasn’t been able to return to work after five surgeries and infections caused by the surgical metal doctors implanted in her leg.

Trauma also played a role. “I live with physical scars, though sometimes the more painful scars are mental,” said Courtney Commander, a friend of Heyer’s who went to the August 2017 rally with her. For her part, Al Bowie was skeptical of receiving help after spending time in the hospital, which she found more traumatic than the attack itself.

While it wasn’t mentioned at the event, many survivors of the August 12 attacks have been bracing themselves for James Fields’ upcoming trial. The 21-year-old from Ohio, who is accused of driving into a crowd of protesters, will begin a three-week trial for first-degree murder and malicious woundings in Charlottesville Circuit Court on November 26. He also faces 30 federal hate crime charges.

Despite all the pain and trauma, the sense of community that emerged after the attacks was a common thread. “I had the privilege of confronting fascism alongside some of the most beautiful people I’ve met in my life,” said Peterson. Bills echoed this sentiment, saying, “The most powerful thing of the summer was what my friends were able to bring out of me. That my sister, community, best friends stepped up with me.”

Still, the tone was urgent. Heal Charlottesville would need more funding to continue its work. Peterson implored people to donate to the organization, which paid for her rent, groceries, and medical bills in the aftermath of the assault. “They don’t have enough to help victims for as long as they need,” she said. “I want to ask Charlottesville to keep walking by my side.”

Categories
News

Too risky: Blakney accepts plea deal to avoid incarceration

After being pepper sprayed, spat on, and called racial slurs, a detective testified that Donald Blakney admitted to taking his anger out on a man he associated with the white supremacists and neo-Nazis in town on August 12.

His lawyer painted a picture of a black father in his early 50s, the sole caretaker of his child with autism, who doesn’t have a computer or read the news, and who came to the Downtown Mall on August 12, 2017, to panhandle for the extra money he needed to buy his son’s medication.

Defense attorney David Baugh said his client, Donald Blakney, never expected to witness the largest gathering of white supremacists in modern history when he went downtown that day. And after being seen as “subhuman,” called a “nigger,” pepper sprayed, and spat on, he got angry—and decided to retaliate.

At a March hearing in Charlottesville General District Court, Eric Mattson, a self-proclaimed Constitutionalist from Arkansas, testified that he was carrying a rolled up American flag when Blakney approached him from behind and beat him over the head with a stick. It broke Mattson’s sunglasses, and caused him to black out for a moment, he said.

And when Mattson, who traveled 16 hours to Charlottesville, went back to his hotel room on August 12, he said he saw footage of Blakney assaulting him on national news.

Almost half a year later, in January, Blakney was charged with malicious wounding. Detective David Stutzman testified in March that when he visited Blakney at his home, Blakney admitted to taking his anger out on the man he associated with the white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The detective said Blakney immediately felt remorse, and asked if Mattson was okay.

In Charlottesville Circuit Court on November 6, Blakney sat solemnly, with one hand gripping his cane and his eyes low.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania cited Blakney’s sincerity as one reason for offering him a plea deal that would downgrade the felony charge to misdemeanor assault, suspend any jail time, and omit any associated fines. He added that a jail sentence would prevent Blakney from taking care of his noncommunicative son. Platania also said the victim had requested Blakney receive no time behind bars.

Platania and Baugh had very frank discussions about how to proceed, how Baugh planned to argue his case if it went to trial, and what the best outcome would be, according to the prosecutor.

Ultimately, Blakney felt he couldn’t risk going to jail if a jury convicted him of malicious wounding, and decided to take the deal, according to his lawyer and spiritual adviser.

It’s a compromise that keeps him home, but one his supporters don’t think is just.

“Mr. Blakney is a man who loves his family, a man who allowed himself to be unjustly treated so that he could be with, and care for, his family,” says Pastor Phil Woodson, of the First United Methodist Church. “He couldn’t fight for justice because justice is not guaranteed, especially for people of color, and he couldn’t risk it…and so justice passed him by.”

Circuit Court Judge Rick Moore has found three white supremacists from out of town guilty of malicious wounding for their actions at the Unite the Right rally, and two are serving six- and eight-year prison sentences. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the judge took time to mull over the plea deal that Baugh and Platania presented to him for the local man.

But Moore eventually approved it—adding that he thought “long and hard,” and also noting the difference in Blakney’s behavior versus the others.

“A lot of people tried to hide or lie,” said Moore. “And he did show remorse.”

Looking at Blakney, he said, “Maybe I’m naive, but I believe what’s been told to me. …I hope this is truly a one-time experience for you.”

Blakney and his family have received death threats since August 12, and were frightened by police who showed up unannounced to investigate the threats, according to the pastor who sat in the gallery in support of the man he calls his friend.

Says Woodson, “It is my hope and prayer that Mr. Blakney and his family will be able to move on from all this, that their fear subsides, and that they never have to go through this again.”

Categories
News

Found guilty: Theologian banned from UVA for life appeals decision

Anti-racist activist Eric Martin was found guilty of trespassing in UVA’s law library, where he entered and refused to leave a private room where Jason Kessler was studying. He’s appealing the conviction. Contributed photo

When about 40 protesters gathered at the University of Virginia School of Law library April 25 to chase off Jason Kessler, one man was arrested—and it wasn’t the one who brought hundreds of torch-wielding white supremacists to Grounds.

Eric Martin, a local activist and theologian, entered the private room where Kessler was studying, sat down, and quietly began reading The Rise and Fall of Apartheid. On October 2, Judge William Barkley found Martin guilty of trespassing and sentenced him to 30 days in jail, with all of the time suspended on the condition of two years of good behavior. He has also been banned from UVA for life.

Martin says he entered the room because he and the other protesters were unsure whether university officials were providing a safe space for Kessler.

“I just thought it would help clarify the status—does he have a private office or not?” Martin told C-VILLE in May. “And the second thing I thought was, ‘Hold up. They had eight months to protect their students by barring this white supremacist who brought people that maced and beat students and beat one of the librarians into a stroke.’”

A Charlottesville police officer and Stephen Parr, the law school’s chief administrative officer, asked Martin to leave the private librarian’s room. When Martin politely declined, as heard on a police body cam video shown in court, he was arrested for trespassing and removed in handcuffs.

Martin has appealed his conviction, and a trial date will be set in December, according to his attorney, Bruce Williamson.

“You don’t go to courtrooms for any kind of justice,” said Bill Streit, Martin’s friend, supporter, and fellow theologian, outside the courthouse. “If we lived in a just society, there would be no racism. White supremacy would be reconciled by justice.”

Kessler, meanwhile, has been banned from Grounds for four years.

In other white supremacy-related court news, Tyler Davis, the Florida man accused of participating in the August 12, 2017, Market Street Parking Garage beating of DeAndre Harris, pleaded not guilty to malicious wounding in Charlottesville Circuit Court on October 4. He’ll go to trial in February, while two others who participated in the beating have already been found guilty and are serving six and eight year sentences.

And Baltimore-based KKK leader Richard Preston was in the same courtroom that day, to request new counsel for an appeal.

In May, Preston pleaded no contest and was found guilty of firing a gun within 1,000 feet of a school on the day of the Unite the Right rally, when Corey Long famously pointed an improvised flamethrower in the vicinity of the Klansman. Both men claimed to be acting in self-defense, and Preston was sentenced to four years in prison.

In entering the no contest plea, Preston waived all rights to an appeal, says legal expert David Heilberg. However, if Preston wants to object to the advice he received from his lawyer, he has to exhaust the state appeals process first before he can file a habeas petition to complain about the legal representation he got.

Categories
News

Riot acts: FBI arrests four white supremacists identified by journalists after August 12 violence

Benjamin Daley was identified more than a year ago as one of the white supremacists assualting people at the Unite the Right rally. Federal charges were filed last week. ProPublica

The photo shows a pale, skinny young man in a white shirt and dark sunglasses, face contorted and veins in his head and neck popping as he appears to throttle a dark-haired woman. They are standing in front of the parking lot of the First United Methodist Church on Second Street NE in Charlottesville. It’s August 12, 2017.

Last week, the man in this photo, Benjamin Drake Daley, 25, and three companions were arrested on federal rioting charges, almost a year after Daley was first identified by the nonprofit media organization ProPublica. As it reported on October 19, 2017, Daley and another California man, Thomas Walter Gillen, 34, are part of a violent white supremacist group called the Rise Above Movement, and had been involved in violence and rioting at several California rallies before they made their way to Charlottesville.

Later reporting by ProPublica also identified two other RAM members, Michael Paul Miselis, 29, and Cole Evan White, 24, involved in the Charlottesville violence.

All four were arrested in California and charged with rioting and conspiring to riot, stemming from both the tiki-torch march through UVA Grounds on August 11 and the downtown brawls on August 12, according the Department of Justice.

At a Charlottesville press conference October 2, U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen described them as a “militant white supremacist group” and “serial rioters” who came “ready to do street battle,” and who committed multiple acts of violence here.

In an interview, ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson said RAM was a “sort of post-skinhead group that models itself on neo-fascists from Europe.” Unlike many of the current crop of white supremacists who spend their time online writing screeds or creating memes, RAM members go the gym and “have a clean cut, athletic look,” says Thompson. They’ve absorbed members from some of the most dangerous groups, he says, and are on the “really violent, street-based edge of the neo-white supremacist movement.”

The group was featured in a ProPublica/Frontline documentary called “Documenting Hate: Charlottesville” that aired on PBS August 7.

On October 2, Cullen gave a nod to the ProPublica and Frontline efforts, but said the federal investigation began more than a year ago, immediately following August 12. Part of the more than yearlong delay in filing charges was because the FBI and Virginia State Police had to sift through “an incredible volume and amount of digital evidence,” as well as press accounts—more than what investigators had at the Boston Marathon bombing, said Cullen. “We’ve laid out a pretty compelling account,” he added.

According to the complaint, RAM propaganda incorporates “fascistic themes of emasculated young white men needing to reclaim their identities through learning to fight and engaging in purifying violence,” which they had done at pro-Trump political rallies-turned-riots in Berkeley and Huntington Beach, California.

The four took part in the “Jews will not replace us” torch march through UVA, and White can be seen “using his torch as a weapon on at least two occasions during the melee,” says the complaint. And on Facebook, Daley boasted of hitting five people, but described the rally the next day as “a HUGE failure.”

On August 12, Daley and his pals can be seen in videos punching, kicking, and head-butting counterprotesters on Second Street NE between High and Jefferson streets, according to court documents. White allegedly head-butted a collar-wearing clergyman and a female counterprotester, whose bloodstained face is included in a photograph in the complaint.

Miselis, a doctoral student at UCLA with a U.S. government security clearance, “appears to be shoving an African American to the ground and then striking him,” says the complaint. It also notes that in the same ProPublica video, Miselis kicked the man as he’s falling to the ground, while Daley is seen grabbing a female counterprotester by the neck and “body slamming her to the ground.” Miselis, who after the rally went back to work as an engineer at defense contractor Northrop Grumman, lost his job a day after being exposed in the ProPublica/Frontline documentary.     

ProPublica “did a fantastic job in piecing together some of the organized activities that occurred on August 11 and August 12, and the work that they did was certainly reviewed by our office as a starting point to understand a little bit about this particular group,” said Cullen.

To date, the majority of the white supremacists arrested on August 11- and 12-related charges, including three of the four men arrested for attacking local resident DeAndre Harris in the Market Street Parking Garage, were first identified by journalists and activists like The Intercept’s Shaun King, who combed through photos, video footage, and social media posts.

Local activist Jalane Schmidt, a religious studies professor at UVA, says that even before the Unite the Right rally, in hopes of getting the permit revoked, activists gave police a 22-page dossier identifying people who had posted violent intentions online before coming to Charlottesville.

“It’s just ridiculous,” she said of the delay in the arrests. “There’s been a bunch of people who’ve been identified.”

While Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney was not available for comment, Sergeant Tony Newberry says he’s been working on finding the remaining two men who were videotaped assaulting Harris but have not been identified. The department has issued national press releases and put the men’s images on the A&E show “Live PD.”

“We’ve done everything we can to identify those two,” he says.

Speaking to the federal arrests, Cullen says a prosecutor in his office “literally has worked on nothing else since August 12.”

“We had to convince ourselves the attacks were without provocation,” he said—and that they were not protected First Amendment activities.

When asked why the four were not charged under hate crime laws, Cullen said federal riot statutes seemed more appropriate, but he did not rule out consideration of other charges—or other arrests.

Legal expert David Heilberg says hate crimes are harder to prove than conspiracy or rioting. “The feds charge with what they’re pretty sure they can prove.”

However, federal prosecutors often make additional charges, called superseding indictments, using the same set of facts if other witnesses come forward, says Heilberg.

“This case should serve as another example of the Department of Justice’s commitment to protecting life, liberty, and civil rights of all our citizens,” said Cullen, who warned, “Any individual who has or plans to travel to this district with the intent to engage in acts of violence will be prosecuted and held accountable for those actions.”

Adam Lee, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Richmond division, took the opportunity to make a plug for law enforcement: “It is important for communities like Charlottesville to remember who the good guys are—who is sworn to protect them—and support them in their mission,” he said.

That might be a hard sell for those who watched city and state police officers stand by as white supremacists and anti-fascists engaged in open violence. The independent investigation of the 2017 events, released in December, found that “law enforcement failed to intervene in violent disorders and did not respond to requests for assistance.”

The four men are being held without bond and Cullen expects them to be transported to Charlottesville and heard before a magistrate judge by this week. Each man faces 10 years in prison if convicted of both charges.

 

daley complaint

Categories
News

In brief: Shifting precincts, hefty raise, murky water and more

Know your polling place

It’s been an eventful couple years, and if you want to speak up when it matters (by voting in the midterms on November 6) your deadline to register is October 15. With that in mind, we also want to remind 15,000 voters in Albemarle County that their polling places have changed.

The county has added three new precincts and folded the Belfield precinct into Jack Jouett, says Albemarle registrar Jake Washburne.

Split are Cale, which begat the new Biscuit Run precinct; Crozet and Brownsville, which gave birth to Mechums River; and Free Bridge, which adds Pantops precinct.

And voters in the University precinct who had cast ballots at the soon-to-be demolished U Hall will now do so at Slaughter Rec Center.

The splits will make Election Day lines more manageable, says Washburne, and there’s another deadline he’s considering: “After February 1, 2019, we can’t change any precincts until after the 2020 presidential election.”

Some are predicting massive turnout in November. Compared to last September, Albemarle has added 2,000 voters. And Washburne mailed over 700 ballots on the first day of absentee voting, compared to 94 on the first day of the last midterm election in 2014. 

In the city, registrar Rosanna Bencoach says there’s always a surge of registrations in September and October from the student population. But according to the state elections website, Charlottesville has 922 more active voters as of October 1 than it did a year ago.

Bencoach issues a caveat to would-be voters: Don’t wait until the last minute to register or to request an absentee ballot, which must be applied for by 5pm the Tuesday before the election.

“With the current postal delivery practices, that’s way too late,” she says.

Quote of the week

“The Court is not typically in the muck and the mire of partisan politics. But this throws it right into the swamp.”—Barbara Perry, Miller Center director of presidential studies, on the Kavanaugh hearing

Lucrative gig

staff photo

City Council appointed Brian Wheeler interim clerk of council at its October 1 meeting. The current city spokesperson and former editor of Charlottesville Tomorrow temporarily replaces Paige Rice, who resigned last month. Since starting with the city in February at $98,000, raises have upped Wheeler’s pay to $116,438, an 8 percent increase in less than a year.

A12 anniversary costs add up

Charlottesville spent $921,334 over the August 12 anniversary weekend putting downtown on lockdown, and the University of Virginia reports its costs were $422,981. Adding the Virginia State Police’s expenses of $3.1 million, that puts the police-heavy weekend at around $4.4 million—and that’s not including Albemarle County’s costs.

Mayor tops duchess

Mayor Nikuyah Walker is No. 51 on the Root’s list of 100 most influential African Americans ages 25 to 45, coming in ahead of No. 52, Meghan Markle.

Chris Greene closed again

After a dog swam in the lake over the weekend and then died suddenly, Albemarle County officials have closed it for water recreation until results from new water quality tests are available.

Pot arrests surge

Despite decriminalization and legalization around the country, Virginia’s marijuana arrests hit their highest levels in a decade last year. Arrests statewide spiked 20 percent and convictions still carry the possibility of a six-month driver’s license suspension and up to $800 in fines, according to the Virginia Mercury.

Indigenous Peoples Day

Karenne Wood. Publicity photo

“We have been categorized as people of the past,” Karenne Wood, an enrolled member of the Monacan Indian Nation, told C-VILLE in March. She pointed out that in school textbooks, American Indians are often written about in the past tense: They lived in this type of house; they ate squash and corn; they wore feathers.

But she also hopes those textbooks will tell the story of Virginia Indians present and future. For Wood, director of Virginia Indian Programs at Virginia Humanities, that means working with textbook writers to tell a fuller—not just colonist—history of Native Americans. “We have adapted to live in this century along with everybody else,” she says.

To acknowledge their history on Indigenous Peoples Day, and to give a native perspective on how the story of Virginia’s first people can be expanded, Wood will give a talk called “Stone, Bone, and Clay: Virginia Indians’ History of 18,000 Years” on Monday, October 8, from 6:30-8pm at Lane Auditorium in the Albemarle County Office Building.

Monacan tribal dancers will perform immediately following her presentation.