Charlottesville terrorist sentenced to life without parole for hate crimes.

[The Romulan Republic]

He faces a separate trial for murder charges for the killing of Heather Heyer.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-virgin ... -1.5194416

A U.S. federal judge imposed a life sentence on the self-described neo-Nazi who killed Heather Heyer by crashing his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., after a white supremacist rally, saying release on parole would be "too great a risk."

The 22-year-old neo-Nazi, James Fields of Maumee, Ohio, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. He had sought a lesser sentence, apologizing after the court viewed video of him plowing his car into a crowd after the Aug. 12, 2017 rally, called Unite the Right. Nineteen people were also injured in the deliberate act.

U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski was unmoved by his plea, saying he had to avert his eyes while the court viewed graphic video of the attack that showed bodies flying as Fields crashed into them.

"Just watching them is terrifying," Urbanski said. "The release of the defendant into a free society is too great a risk."

The violence shook the college town at the end of two days of rallies by avowed white nationalists, who marched first with torches and later with medieval-style shields.

U.S. President Donald Trump was criticized from the left and right for initially saying there were "fine people on both sides" of the dispute between neo-Nazis and their opponents at the rally.

Jury in state case recommends life plus 419 years for Fields
Trump's Justice Department said after Friday's sentence that prosecuting hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism is a "top priority."

"Hatred and bigotry have no place in our nation. 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," said assistant attorney general Eric Dreiband.

Before the sentence was handed down, Heyer's parents recounted the pain of losing their daughter.

"It was an incident I will never fully recover from," said Mark Heyer, her father.

Her mother, Susan Bro, described herself as "deeply wounded" and recounted crying uncontrollably at times.

Fields already faces life in prison at his state court sentencing next month after being found guilty by a jury of murdering Heyer and wounding others.

Ahead of Friday's sentencing hearing, prosecutors noted he had long espoused violent beliefs. Less than a month before the attack he posted an image on Instagram showing a car plowing through a crowd of people captioned: "You have the right to protest but I'm late for work."

Even after the attack, Fields remained unrepentant, prosecutors said, noting that in a Dec. 7, 2017, phone call from jail with his mother, he blasted Bro for her activism after the attack.

"She is a communist. An anti-white liberal," Fields said, according to court papers filed by prosecutors. He rejected his mother's plea to consider that the woman had "lost her daughter," replying, "She's the enemy."

Fields pleaded guilty to the federal hate crime charges in March under a deal with prosecutors who agreed not to seek the death penalty.

Fields was photographed hours before the attack carrying a shield with the emblem of a far-right hate group. He has identified himself as a neo-Nazi.

Fields' attorneys suggested he felt intimidated and acted to protect himself. They asked a judge to sentence him to less than life in prison, without specifying a term, seeking mercy citing his relative youth and history of mental health diagnoses.

They actually tried to use a self-defense argument for running over a crowd of protesters with his car?

[SolarpunkFan]

While the sentence won't bring back Heather Heyer, my heart is warmed by justice well served.

In short: https://youtu.be/2LM0CZZ9Uw8

[The Romulan Republic]

Indeed.

Don't you just love his lawyer's argument, though? "he felted intimidated and acted to protect himself."

Yeah, I'm sure most Neo-Nazis feel intimidated by the existence of people different from them, and think they're protecting themselves/the white race. That doesn't mean that they get leniency for murder and terrorism.

[mr friendly guy]

Sounds like the same argument police use when they shoot unarmed civilians. I was scared, I thought they had a gun etc.

[The Romulan Republic]

Sounds like the same argument police use when they shoot unarmed civilians. I was scared, I thought they had a gun etc.

Well, there's a lot of overlap between white supremacists and police (see the thread I just posted about the Right-wing terror group busted in Germany).

[Broomstick]

They actually tried to use a self-defense argument for running over a crowd of protesters with his car?

It is the job of a defense attorney to defend his client. That can be really hard when the person on trial doesn't have a justifiable reason for what he did. There's the insanity defense... and self-defense... and that's about it for this situation. Really, it's not defensible but the defendant's lawyer is obligated to try something. I not sure what else the defense attorney could have done in this case. They had him on video deliberating running people down with his car, it's not like the attorney could raise some doubt about what he did or claim he was somewhere else at the time.

[The Romulan Republic]

They actually tried to use a self-defense argument for running over a crowd of protesters with his car?

It is the job of a defense attorney to defend his client. That can be really hard when the person on trial doesn't have a justifiable reason for what he did. There's the insanity defense... and self-defense... and that's about it for this situation. Really, it's not defensible but the defendant's lawyer is obligated to try something. I not sure what else the defense attorney could have done in this case. They had him on video deliberating running people down with his car, it's not like the attorney could raise some doubt about what he did or claim he was somewhere else at the time.

Yeah, I suppose. Its a real shit situation for a defense attorney to have someone like that for a client, but everyone's got the right to due process. And God bless defense attorneys for doing it, to be honest, because its a thankless job, but without them there'd be no due process.

Still, I'd have preferred an insanity plea. They'd have been equally bullshit arguments, but at least the latter wouldn't have been an insult to the victims by implying that the attack was somehow justified.

[Zaune]

Still, I'd have preferred an insanity plea. They'd have been equally bullshit arguments, but at least the latter wouldn't have been an insult to the victims by implying that the attack was somehow justified.

So would the lawyer, probably, but Fields was too much of a self-righteous arrogant ass to go for that angle.

Besides, a depressingly large number of Americans probably agree with him anyway.

[Vendetta]

Still, I'd have preferred an insanity plea. They'd have been equally bullshit arguments, but at least the latter wouldn't have been an insult to the victims by implying that the attack was somehow justified.

No you wouldn't. They'd have been far more bullshit arguments. The standard for an NGRI in US federal court is that the perpetrator was suffering from a severe mental illness diagnosable by a mental health professional at the time of the crime. If the defense tried something so specious it would at best result in a mistrial and at worst any conviction being overturned on appeal because the trial was conducted improperly.

Defense attorneys are bound by their code of professional conduct to do the best they can for their client, if they don't and it can be shown they didn't that's one of the grounds leave to appeal can be granted.

[Lord Revan]

They actually tried to use a self-defense argument for running over a crowd of protesters with his car?

It is the job of a defense attorney to defend his client. That can be really hard when the person on trial doesn't have a justifiable reason for what he did. There's the insanity defense... and self-defense... and that's about it for this situation. Really, it's not defensible but the defendant's lawyer is obligated to try something. I not sure what else the defense attorney could have done in this case. They had him on video deliberating running people down with his car, it's not like the attorney could raise some doubt about what he did or claim he was somewhere else at the time.

Yeah, I suppose. Its a real shit situation for a defense attorney to have someone like that for a client, but everyone's got the right to due process. And God bless defense attorneys for doing it, to be honest, because its a thankless job, but without them there'd be no due process.

Still, I'd have preferred an insanity plea. They'd have been equally bullshit arguments, but at least the latter wouldn't have been an insult to the victims by implying that the attack was somehow justified.

As Vendetta already pointed out "insanity plea" is something that's extremly hard to get thru as it's only a really small subset of mental issues that qualify for it, essentially ones where you can't tell the difference between right and wrong at conceptual level. While one can argue that bigotry is a mental illness, white supremist generally have concept of right and wrong even if their idea of what those concepts contain is perverted.

Still "self-defense" isn't a worst possible argument the defense attorney could have, they could have claimed that killing those people was justified and legal "because they're enemies of america" which probably been the argument had the accused defended himself.