Susan Bro at a memorial last year for her daughter Heather Heyer. Bro says she's relieved to not have to go through another trial. Photo: Eze Amos
Some victims of the August 12, 2017, car attack are breathing a sigh of relief that they won’t have to endure a second trial, after the white supremacist who murdered Heather Heyer pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes on March 27.
In a state trial in December, James Alex Fields, Jr., a 21-year-old from Maumee, Ohio, was found guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated malicious wounding, and other charges for killing Heyer and severely injuring dozens of other anti-racist protesters when he drove into a crowd on Fourth Street—an event that many have called an act of domestic terror.
A Charlottesville jury recommended he serve a life sentence plus 419 years in prison, but Fields still faced federal charges. His guilty plea agreement means he’ll avoid the possibility of being sentenced to death.
“It’s a relief to think that we don’t have to go through another trial,” says Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro. “It was exhausting the first time.”
She also called it a relief that Fields, who initially pleaded not guilty to the hate crimes, has finally acknowledged his guilt, and admitted that he willfully caused bodily injury to the group of protesters celebrating on Fourth Street because of their race, color, religion, or national origin. Now, “he can get on with his life and I can get on with mine,” says Bro.
Fields told the judge he’d been receiving therapy and taking medication for mental health issues such as bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, ADHD, schizoid personality, and explosive onset disorders since he was 6 years old. But when asked if he was under the influence of any medicine or alcohol that would interfere with his ability to enter the plea freely and voluntarily, he said, “I’m feeling normal, sir.”
Fields, now sporting a thick, scruffy beard that stuck out about an inch off his face, was escorted into the courtroom in handcuffs by multiple U.S. Marshals.
In exchange for Fields’ guilty plea, U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski explained that a 30th charge, which carried the possibility of the death penalty, would be dropped. Therefore, his maximum punishment would be another life sentence.
U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen said he thought the plea agreement struck a good balance between punishment and protecting the interests of his victims, and that it, “vindicated—to the extent you can ever vindicate—the loss of life in respect to Heather Heyer.”
“There’s no point in killing him. It would not bring back Heather,” says her mother.
Bro has remained in the spotlight as racial tensions boil in the wake of the rally where her daughter died, which brought Fields and hundreds of other white supremacists and neo-Nazis to town, and emboldened others across the country. She’s the co-founder of the Heather Heyer Foundation, which seeks to honor the life of the 32-year-old paralegal and activist through scholarship opportunities for people passionate about bringing peaceful social change.
Says Bro, “Sadly, it took a white girl dying before anyone paid attention to civil rights around here.”
After finding him guilty of first-degree murder and nine other charges on Friday, a jury today recommended that James Alex Fields Jr. spend the rest of his life in prison for the carnage he caused here when he drove into a crowd August 12, 2017, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more.
On top of the life sentence for Heyer’s murder, jurors recommended an additional 419 years, far exceeding the minimum penalties of 135 years the self-proclaimed neo-Nazi faced, and threw in a fine of $480,000 for good measure.
Outside Charlottesville Circuit Court, Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania said the trial had been a long time coming for the victims and their families. “We are unable to heal their physical injuries or bring Heather back,” he said. “We are hopeful they’re able to take some measure of comfort in these convictions.”
He also said, “We all have a role to play” in stemming the tide of hate.
Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, said she was feeling “so many” mixed emotions. She thanked the jury—and Fields’ defense attorneys—and said, ”But in the end, the hands of justice say he needs to be kept away from society for awhile and I’m content with that.”
Susan Bro, outside the Charlottesville Circuit Court after jurors recommend life in prison for her daughter’s murderer, is flanked by Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania and Nina Antony, lead prosecutor in the case. Eze Amos
She said there’s still a lot of social justice work to be done in elections, civil rights and Black Lives Matter. “I’m tired of catchphrases and I’m tired of people making nice-sounding words and nothing happens.” Bro founded the Heather Heyer Foundation to honor her daughter’s commitment to equal rights.
Bro said she doesn’t hate Fields, “but my God the kid’s messed up.”
Before recommending sentencing, jurors heard yesterday about Fields’ lifetime of mental illness.
Al Bowie, who was injured when Fields drove his Dodge Challenger into counterprotesters on Fourth Street, said, “I have a personality disorder, a borderline personality disorder, and I’ve never hurt anyone in my life. Racism and allegiance to President Trump are not mental illnesses. They are choices.”
A judge will formally sentence Fields March 19.
Here’s how the sentencing was broken down.
First-degree murder: Life in prison and a $100,000 fine
Five counts of aggravated malicious wounding: 70 years and $70,000 fine for each count
Three counts of malicious wounding: 20 years and $10,000 for each count
The prosecution and defense have given their closing arguments on the ninth day of James Alex Fields Jr.’s first-degree murder trial.
The man charged with killing Heather Heyer and injuring many others when he rammed his car into a crowd at an August 12, 2017, white supremacist rally also faces being convicted of five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of hit and run.
Prosecutor Nina Antony encouraged the jury to find him guilty on all 10 counts, which would mean they believe he acted with malice, and that his actions that day were premeditated and intentional.
“It’s not about what Mr. Fields did, it’s about what his intent was when he did it,” said Antony during her closing.
Narrating for a final time what happened in videos that the jurors have likely memorized over the past two weeks, Antony said Fields turned onto Fourth Street, where two cars and a group of activists were in front of him, and where nothing but empty road was behind him. He briefly stopped his Dodge Challenger and then started reversing. He could have continued backing up to get off of Fourth Street if that’s what he truly desired, she said, but instead he stopped, idled, and then “something change[d] for him.” That’s when he raced his car forward into the crowd.
Months before, he had posted to Instagram an eerily similar image of a car plowing into a group of protesters.
“He seizes that opportunity to make his Instagram post a reality,” said Antony.
Though the defense’s witnesses testified that Fields was essentially calm, cool, and collected minutes before he sped into the group, Antony said it was in that moment of idling that his demeanor changed. She said he then showed the same “hatred” he previously displayed in text conversations with his mom, in which she asked him to be careful at the Unite the Right rally, and to which he replied with an image of Adolf Hitler accompanied by a message that said, “We’re not the [ones] who need to be careful.”
And though he was immediately apologetic to the police officers who took him into custody after two brief pursuits, Antony said he showed his true colors in two recorded jailhouse conversations between he and his mom months later, in which—among other things—he said, “it doesn’t fucking matter” that Heyer died, and called her mother, Susan Bro, a “communist” and “the enemy.”
This case is about more than differing political ideologies, however.
“It’s about those bodies that he left strewn on the ground,” Antony said. “It’s about Heather.”
In the defense’s closing arguments, attorney Denise Lunsford noted the “crowd mentality” of the protesters and counterprotesters attending the Unite the Right rally.
“A lot of people were behaving badly that day,” she said. “That’s just about as simple as you can put it.”
Though numerous witnesses described the band of activists that Fields sped into as happy, cheerful, and celebratory, Lunsford told the jury, “The difference between a joyful crowd and a hostile mob is in the eye of the beholder.”
She said Fields thought he was being attacked from behind when he plowed into them, which is what he told the magistrate after being taken to jail that day.
“We know there is no one behind him,” again countered Antony. Photos, videos, and witness testimony corroborate that, she said.
Lunsford asked the jury to put themselves in Fields’ shoes. He was 20 years old at the time, overwhelmed by all that happened that day, and as indicated by the directions he had just typed into his GPS, he was just trying to go home to Maumee, Ohio. He’d been spattered with urine earlier in the day and had exchanged choice words with people he calls “antifa.” And when, he alleged, a crowd of them started rushing his car, he thought he was in danger.
Fields didn’t stop at the scene of the crime because his glasses had been knocked onto his floorboard and he couldn’t see whether he’d injured anyone, according to Lunsford. Without his glasses, he also couldn’t see police chasing him, she added.
Antony noted that, even without his glasses, he backed up in a straight line, dodged cars, and efficiently made turns.
A photo taken of the front of the Challenger as Fields reverses away from the crowd he just ran over has been admitted into evidence. His face is visible. He stares intently.
“That is not the face of someone who is scared,” said Antony. “That is the face of anger, of hatred. That is the face of malice.”
Jurors will officially begin deliberating tomorrow at 9am.
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.
The Rivanna River flooded in May and edged near homes in Woolen Mills.
Skyclad ap
But wait, there’s more on the ballot
While congressional candidates are getting all the attention, they’re not the only choices that need to be made at the polls November 6. Virginia likes to ask voters to weigh in on additions to its constitution, such as the now-unconstitutional marriage-is-between-a-man-and-a-woman amendment. A repeal of that will not appear on the ballot, but there are two other constitutional amendments for voters to consider on Tuesday.
One expands a property-tax exemption to spouses of service members who were killed or totally disabled in action to allow the spouse—as long as he or she does not remarry—to relocate and still claim the exemption. A “yes” on this amendment means approving the exemption.
The second, more controversial amendment, allows localities to offer property tax breaks to owners who make improvements to flood-prone properties. That means people who put money into protecting their property against rising waters can get a real estate tax break.
Critics say such breaks mean people who don’t live on the water are subsidizing the cost of waterfront living for others, and that they encourage building on flood-prone land. Supporters say the tax relief provides an incentive for owners to make expensive fixes to protect their properties.
A “yes” vote on this amendment means you support allowing localities to offer the property tax break.
Earlier this year, Delegate Steve Landes, who represents western Albemarle, voted against the flood amendment in the House because of concerns about the increasing number of constitutional amendments providing “more and more exemptions from property taxes.” But he says he supports both amendments now, and notes that while the flood amendment allows localities to provide this exemption, “it does not require them to do so.”
Quote of the week
“I don’t need thoughts and prayers—I need change.”—Jordan Bridges, a UVA third-year and president of Jewish Voice for Peace, at an October 27 candlelight vigil for the 11 people shot to death in a Pittsburgh synagogue earlier that day, according to the Cavalier Daily.
In brief
Unite the Right organizer Richard Spencer will not be welcome at his alma mater the next four years. Eze Amos
Banned from UVA
Ten people associated with last year’s August 11 march through Grounds are banned from university property for four years. The list includes alum Richard Spencer, whose wife filed for divorce last week, alleging assault; Elliott Kline, aka Eli Mosley, former Identity Evropa leader in charge of Unite the Right security; former Marine Vasillios Pistolis; the Daily Stormer’s Robert “Azzmador” Ray, and four members of California-based Rise Above Movement arrested in early October.
Fields files charge
James Fields, the man charged with driving his car into a crowd on August 12, 2017, killing one person and injuring many others, was allegedly attacked by another inmate at the local jail earlier this month. Fields filed an assault charge against Timothy Ray Brown Jr, but he showed no physical signs of being beaten up at his October 29 motions hearing,
Too young to drink—and buy handguns
Two UVA students filed a lawsuit challenging a federal ban on the sale of handguns to those under 21 (18-year-olds can legally buy rifles and shotguns, but not handguns). Tanner Hirschfeld, 20, and Natalia Marshall, 18, are suing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, its acting director, Thomas Brandon, and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, claiming the age limit is unconstitutional.
George Allen’s old house on the block
staff photo
Social Hall, the circa 1814 house once owned by the former Virginia governor and U.S. senator on East Jefferson Street, is for sale for nearly $4 million. Janice Aron bought it in 2006 for $1.1 million, and extensively renovated the 6,500-square-foot manse, which features five bedrooms, a lap pool, and an unparalleled view of Market Street Park and the statue of General Robert E. Lee.
James Fields earlier in the day, before he plowed his car into dozens of people on Fourth Street.
Photo Eze Amos
The man charged with 30 federal hate crimes, including the murder of Heather Heyer by ramming his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counterprotesters on August 12, gave a clipped introduction to the judge when he announced himself as James Alex Fields Jr. on July 5.
Each hate crime charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, and it’s unclear whether prosecutors will seek the death penalty.
Wearing a gray-striped jail jumpsuit with bright orange slip-on shoes and rectangular glasses, the 21-year-old Ohio man, escorted by U.S. marshals, strode slowly into the courtroom. He sat next to his attorneys with his back facing those seated in the room, and turned around twice to peer at the crowd, once waving to someone in the first row, who waved back and appeared to work with his attorneys.
While answering procedural questions in a monotone voice before his arraignment, Fields never tacked “sir” onto the end of his responses. He told the judge he has a high school diploma.
“I’ve been a security guard,” he said, when asked about past employment, and he also said he’s been receiving treatment for bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression and ADHD, which have required “several medications” such as antipsychotics and antidepressants.
His brown hair was longer on the top than the sides, and his beard was starting to grow back from what appeared to be a recent shave, as also illustrated by the sketch artist sitting in the front row of the Western District of Virginia federal courthouse.
At one point, seven uniformed marshals were present in the room with the man who some have called a domestic terrorist. At the Unite the Right rally on August 12, Fields was seen standing shoulder-to-shoulder with members of white supremacist group Vanguard America, and carrying a shield marked with their logo. The organization with neo-Nazi ideology has denied that Fields was a member.
After he drove his Challenger into a group of counterprotesters on Fourth Street, sending bodies flying and ramming his vehicle into the back of a Toyota Camry, Fields fled the scene. Police stopped his car on a nearby street and arrested him, and it wasn’t long before classmates and teachers at his former high school in Ohio started speaking to national media outlets such as Vice and ABC News about the kid who drew swastikas and idolized Adolf Hitler, and whom they dubbed “the Nazi of the school.” Fields also previously hit his mother and locked her in a room when she asked him to stop playing video games, and on another occasion, threatened his mother with a 12-inch knife, according to police reports.
As Fields pleaded not guilty to the 30 hate crimes, an unidentified person on the other side of the room—which was packed with victims of the car attack and Heyer’s friends and family—let out a loud, exasperated, “pffffft.”
Federal public defender Lisa Loresh and Denise Lunsford, who also represent Fields in his first-degree murder trial on state charges, will defend him in the federal trial.
Both offered no comment outside of the courthouse.
“Sad situation, man,” said car attack victim Marcus Martin as he was leaving the courtroom with Heyer’s parents, Susan Bro and Mark Heyer. “Sad, sad, sad.”
Updated Friday, July 6 at 4:00pm with additional information.
William Evans wants a court to order the release of videos of James Fields’ Dodge Challenger plowing into counterprotesters on Fourth Street on August 12. Photo by Eze Amos
In a widely viewed YouTube video, a Fairfax man says he’s able to disprove information disseminated by the Charlottesville Police Department about the fatal car attack on August 12.
Now William Evans is on a mission to find two videos shown publicly in a December 14 court hearing that could help him understand what happened that day, and he claims the city has unlawfully refused to show them to him.
James Alex Fields is charged with driving a silver Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counterprotesters at the Unite the Right rally, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others. His car rear-ended a second sedan, which then smashed into a minivan, according to a press release published by the city and on the CPD’s Facebook page on August 13.
“The minivan had slowed for a crowd of people crossing through the intersection,” the press release says. But Evans says otherwise. And he has made several YouTube videos about the events that transpired that day.
William Evans
In one called “NEW VIDEO from Charlottesville: the Grassy Knoll Film,” a nod to the conspiracy-theory-prone assassination of John F. Kennedy, Evans shows video evidence from an undisclosed source that the maroon van was stopped at the scene of the crash about five minutes before the fatal attack.
“You tell me whether that van slowed for a crowd of pedestrians or whether that van parked there deliberately,” he says in the video, while positioned in front of two bookcases overflowing with literature and wearing a light blue polo shirt. “The answer is obvious. The Charlottesville Police Department has an obligation to clarify this mistake and to investigate that maroon van, to investigate why it was parked there and to investigate the people in it.”
But Evans never explicitly states his own theory.
For this and other questions he’s raised on his YouTube channel, SonofNewo, Evans has filed a motion seeking a court order under the Freedom of Information Act that the city of Charlottesville and Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania unseal the videos shown in an open courtroom at Fields’ December 14 preliminary hearing, and make them available to the public.
“The precedent is pretty clear across the entire country, both in the Supreme Court and in federal courts and in the state courts that statutes like this, when you show something like this to a portion of the public in a public setting, at that point you don’t have the right as a government entity to withhold it from anybody else who asks for it,” says Evans.
However, Alan Gernhardt at the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council says the videos could fall under FOIA’s criminal investigative files exemption, especially if they were shown at a preliminary hearing. “They’re not actually introduced into the court file,” he says. “It’s a discretionary release showing it for the preliminary hearing but not actually releasing it to the public.”
Evans says the accounts of the videos that he’s read from Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler and reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post, who were present at the December hearing, are contradictory.
Platania declined to comment on the record about why he and Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina Antony motioned to withdraw the two videos from Fields’ case file.
“I have been served with the petitions and expect the Charlottesville Circuit Court to set the matter for a hearing that I plan to be present for,” he says.
Bill Burke with his wife, Annie, and daughter, Chelsea.
Submitted photo
When Ohio resident Bill Burke came to protest Charlottesville’s white nationalist Unite the Right rally, he was expecting a peaceful assembly. Instead, he got plowed into by a 20-year-old driving a Dodge Challenger.
“I can remember the feeling of people hitting up against me,” he says in an email. “I’m not sure if the car hit me too or not, it’s hard to say. Then I remember a woman saying I had to hold my head together.”
Burke says the person assisting him grabbed his arm and pushed his hand against his head. He could feel blood pouring from his open wounds.
“People kept telling me to stay awake and look at them, and I just wanted to close my eyes and rest,” he says. He could feel a person lying next to him. He realized, at some point, that medics were doing CPR on her.
“I could feel every time they did a chest compression because we were so close,” Burke says. “I used to be an EMT and I’ve seen some bad stuff, but not being able to do anything for her was the most helpless feeling I’ve ever had.”
He didn’t realize until later that the woman lying next to him was Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman who was killed during the attack.
Burke is one of the 19 victims injured in what many have called an act of domestic terrorism. He suffered two deep head lacerations that required about a dozen staples and many stitches. He has many abrasions and limited mobility because he’s still experiencing a lot pain on his left side. He also has concussion symptoms and uses a cane when walking more than a few feet.
Regardless, Burke says, “I am doing really well.”
Earlier this summer, Burke, who works for the Athens County Foster Parent Association, attended an International Socialist Organization conference in Chicago, where he says a Charlottesville woman was pleading for solidarity and support, “and was scared for the lives of her family and friends and herself.” This is when he felt called to protest the rally. He came alone from Hockingport, Ohio.
He could see the Western heritage defenders who descended on Charlottesville riding around the city in trucks, holding guns, throwing bottles and yelling, he says.
“We were chanting loudly, but I didn’t see any fighting or throwing stuff,” he says about his own group. “We were just feeling the excitement of being together and supporting each other. Then I remember hearing some screaming, and I heard a car engine revving up, like someone was punching the accelerator.”
That person also came from Ohio. Maumee resident James Alex Fields Jr., faces charges of second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and failing to stop.
Burke, now home in Hockingport, turned 40 August 13 while in the hospital.
When asked if he regrets his trip to Charlottesville, Burke says, “No, not in the least bit. I think it’s important to speak out against hate.” And he has a message for Fields, the driver of the Challenger who injured him. “I feel sad that you have so much hate at such a young age. Our society has failed you.”
James Fields earlier in the day, before he plowed his car into dozens of people on Fourth Street.
Photo Eze Amos
Two days after he plowed into a group of peaceful counterprotesters with his car, white nationalist James Alex Fields Jr. appeared via webcam in Charlottesville General District Court Monday morning.
The Maumee, Ohio, man, 20, is charged with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and a hit-and-run for driving his Dodge Challenger down Fourth Street in the aftermath of the August 12 Unite the Right rally. He struck about two dozen people, killing 32-year-old local activist Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others.
Fields told Judge Robert Downer he couldn’t afford his own attorney and was appointed Charles “Buddy” Weber, who also represented rally organizer Jason Kessler earlier this year in a misdemeanor assault conviction for punching a man on the Downtown Mall while collecting signatures for his remove-Vice-Mayor-Wes-Bellamy-from-office petition.
Fields’ face appeared on the courtroom’s TV screen from the local jail for several minutes before the judge entered the courtroom. He kept his head down.
Photos from the rally show Fields standing with members of Vanguard America, but the white supremacist group disavowed any association with him.
James Fields is in the background holding a shield to the right of organizer Eli Mosley, center, with Vanguard Americas, who say he’s not with them. Photo Eze Amos
Fields’ former high school social studies teacher, Derek Weimer, told CNN that Fields had “outlandish, very radical beliefs,” when he taught him at Randall K. Cooper High School in Union, Kentucky.
“It was quite clear he had some really extreme views and maybe a little bit of anger behind them,” Weimer told the Atlanta-based station. “He really bought into this white supremacist thing. He was very big into Nazism. He really had a fondness for Adolf Hitler.”
And the Washington Post reports that in 2010, his mother, Samantha Bloom, said he struck her in the head, put his hands over her mouth and threatened to beat her after she told him to stop playing video games. She said he was taking medication to control his temper.
In another instance in October 2011, Bloom, who uses a wheelchair, allegedly called 911 to say her son was threatening her and she didn’t feel in control of the situation, according to the Post. The next month, an unknown caller asked police to come to the house because Bloom wanted Fields to be assessed at the hospital, but was too afraid to take him. The caller said he had just spit in her face and stood behind her with a 12-inch knife the night before.
After Fields’ August 14 court appearance, Traditionalist Worker Party founder Matthew Heimbach, who was scheduled to speak at the Unite the Right rally, defended him outside the courthouse.
“We have seen the pictures and the video of bats coming at that vehicle as a 20-year-old man feared for his life,” Heimbach said. “[Counterprotesters] came prepared for war. They tried to kill us.”
And moments earlier, “The nationalist community defended ourselves against thugs in a battle that was brought by this city that wanted a bloodbath.”
Fields’ next court appearance is scheduled for August 25.
At the August 12 Unite the Right rally, they faced the opposite complaint: That they stood and watched assaults take place.
Civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel was on Market Street after the rally was declared an unlawful assembly, and hesays there were no police in sight.
“When fistfights broke out, state police did nothing,” he says. “I was a little surprised they made a decision to let all hell break loose.”
Throughout the weekend, people noted a number of occasions when the police were absent: the altercation in front of the Rotunda following the tiki-torch procession through UVA on Friday night. The assaults that took place on Market Street Saturday morning before Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency. And the brutal attack of Dre Harris by white nationalists in the Market Street Parking Garage beside the Charlottesville police station.
At an August 14 press conference, Police Chief Al Thomas disputed assertions that officers were ordered to not intervene. “Throughout the entire weekend, the Virginia State Police and Charlottesville police intervened to break up fights and altercations between those at the rally site, and that began Friday night,” said Thomas.
In many of the conflicts, someone was attacked and the attacker disappeared into the crowd, says Thomas. On Saturday alone, police received 250 calls for service at the rally, and state police treated 36 injured people.
And he says the department is still getting calls about assaults and civil rights violations that occurred over the weekend. The city has established a tipline and people can report incidents by emailing cvillerally@charlottesville.org or calling 970-3280.
City police and City Manager Maurice Jones said August 7 that they could not ensure the safety of Emancipation Park and used that as the basis for issuing rally organizer Jason Kessler a permit for McIntire Park, a change that was blocked in federal court the evening before the rally.
“We had a very large footprint to cover,” said Thomas, especially after the rally was canceled and opposing factions dispersed throughout the city.
At press briefings before August 12, Thomas said he’d learned a number of lessons from the KKK rally, and that the Unite the Right protest was an entirely different beast.
He also said there would be close to 1,000 law enforcement and emergency responders on hand.
Perhaps that’s why many wonder why this event was so much more violent than the KKK rally, with so many fewer arrests—six—compared with the 23 people charged July 8.
“Police obviously didn’t do their job,” says John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, which joined the ACLU of Virginia in representing Kessler in his suit against the city for its change of venue. “They didn’t separate the sides.”
Thomas says there was a plan to keep the factions separate by having the alt-rights enter through the back of Emancipation Park. “They did not follow that,” he says.
Alt-right attendees like Richard Spencer complained of having to run a “gauntlet” of counterprotesters, and Kessler said police did not do their job in protecting the people at his rally—at least before he was drowned out and chased by angry citizens at a press conference Sunday, when he had to run to the police for protection.
Virginia State Police spokesperson Corinne Geller told the New York Times, “It may have looked like a lot of our folks were standing around” because of the sheer number of officers on the scene, but “there were other troopers and law enforcement officers who were responding to incidents as they arose.”
Activist Emily Gorcenski livestreamed the tiki-torch procession through UVA Grounds Friday night, and was perplexed by the paucity of police at the event that ended with a brawl when white nationalists, vastly outnumbering a small number of protesters, surrounded them at the Thomas Jefferson statue in front to the Rotunda on University Avenue.
“The media showed up,” says Gorcenski. “If journalists knew and the event was publicized on Twitter, the police should have shown up.”
She says she did see police after she washed the pepper spray out of her eyes, and UVA says one officer was among those injured. University Police Chief Michael Gibson did not return a call from C-VILLE.
Gorcenski was not in the immediate rally area August 12, but says she saw from a distance “police using tactics for crowd dispersal with slow marches down the street that were very deliberate” efforts to calmly control the crowd.
“I thought police had significantly improved their tactics since July 8, when they did their job poorly,” says Gorcenski, referring to the “unnecessary deployment of chemical agents.”
While tear gas was in the air August 12, Charlottesville police say it did not come from them.
Former New York cop and prosecutor Eugene O’Donnell, now a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice,says, “I think it’s unfair to do a wholesale condemnation of police. It’s a fallacy that by police acting emphatically, that automatically makes things better.”
There’s no “magic book” that tells police what to do, and “police wrestle with this all the time,” he says. Bigger cities are better equipped to handle situations such as the one Charlottesville faced because they do it all the time and “the more you do it, the better you get,” says O’Donnell.
And while the vast majority of protests are peaceful, he says Charlottesville was hit with a “double whammy” because it’s a department that doesn’t handle a lot of violent demonstrations and “the people who came were intent on causing trouble.”
Says O’Donnell, “Police really do feel any action you take, you’re subjected to much less criticism for not acting than acting.”
Arrested August 12
Troy Dunigan, 21, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, for disorderly conduct for throwing something into the crowd.
Jacob Smith Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail
Jacob L. Smith, 21, of Louisa, Virginia, for misdemeanor assault and battery for allegedly punching a female reporter from The Hill in the face.
James M. O’Brien, 44, of Gainesville, Florida, for carrying a concealed handgun.
David Parrott, 35, of Paoli, Indiana, for failure to disperse in a riot.
Steven Balcaitis Charlottesville Police Department
Steven Balcaitis, 36, of York, South Carolina, for assault and battery for allegedly choking a woman in McIntire Park.
James Alex Fields, CPD
James Alex Fields, 20, of Maumee, Ohio, for second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and hit and run.
