An Ohio man who killed one person and injured dozens of others when he accelerated his car into a crowd of counterprotesters at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., was sentenced to life in prison Friday.
A federal judge sentenced James Alex Fields Jr., an avowed neo-Nazi with a history of racism and anti-Semitism, on federal hate-crime charges. The sentencing came nearly two years after Mr. Fields’ attack killed Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal who was demonstrating against the hundreds of white nationalists who took to the streets that day.
The incident, which federal prosectors have called an act of domestic terrorism, followed violent clashes that erupted at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017, and marked a nationwide flashpoint in the rise of white supremacy in the U.S.
“Hatred and bigotry have no place in our nation,” said Eric Dreiband, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, in a statement after the sentencing. “Violent actions inspired by such warped thinking are a disgrace to our people and our values, and the Department of Justice will not tolerate such depraved acts.”
Earlier this year, Mr. Fields, 22 years old, pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes—each one carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison and representing those he killed or injured when he accelerated his Dodge Challenger into the crowd. A plea deal took the death penalty off the table.
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