Charlottesville Rally Trial: Jury Finds Far-Right Conspiracy

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia – The jury found Tuesday that the main organizers of the deadly right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 were state law responsible for injuries suffered by counter-demonstrators and awarded more than $ 25 million in damages. But the jury is bogged down because of two federal conspiracy allegations.

The verdict in the civil trial was mixed, but a reprimand for the defendants – a mix of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Confederate sympathizers. They were found to be involved in a conspiracy leading up to the Virginia law rally that began as a protest against the removal of a Confederate statue and resulted in a car attack that killed a counter-demonstrator, 32-year-old Heather Heyer became .

The case in the US District Court in Charlottesville was brought by nine plaintiffs, four men and five women, including four people injured in the car attack. In addition to their physical injuries from the crash, including three concussions and a fractured skull, plaintiffs testified that they suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, including insomnia, poor concentration, flashbacks and panic attacks.

All sought compensatory and unspecified punitive damages, including payment of medical expenses and $ 3 million to $ 10 million in pain and suffering, depending on the severity of their injuries.

They said that not only did they want to blame the organizers of the demonstrations for the violence, but also hoped to deter hate groups from wearing similar toxic glasses in the future and rely on civil lawsuits if the criminal justice system is not resolute.

The rally, at which extremists carried torches and chanted racist slogans, was organized as a protest against the removal of a statue from Robert E. Lee, which has since been dismantled. But their broader goal was to move the far right from the edge of the internet into the mainstream.

The federal indictment that the jury was stuck on related to whether the defendants were involved in a racist violent conspiracy established under a federal act of 1871 known as the Ku Klux Klan Act that was designed to prevent vigilante groups from newly freed slaves their civil rights. Plaintiffs said they would consider moving the federal prosecution to a retrial.

Numerous defendants readily admitted their racial hatred, but said that they were exercising their First Amendment rights with legal permission to rally and were not part of a conspiracy to commit violence. They blamed the violence on James Fields, a protester who mowed down counter-demonstrators in his car and killed Ms. Heyer. As a defendant in this case, he has already served several life sentences.

The jury was asked to decide whether each of the defendants was involved in a conspiracy and, if so, what compensation was to be paid to the plaintiffs.

The jury began deliberating on Friday. The 77 pages of the judge’s instructions stated that a conspiracy does not require all parties involved to reach an agreement or meet in the same room or even know each other. Nor did a conspiracy require the participants to cause the violence themselves. The main point was that they all had a common goal and could foresee the violence that would occur.

Plaintiffs drew a line from Mr. Fields through all of the participating organizations, connecting him first to Vanguard America, the group he marched with in Charlottesville, and then to the other organizations and their leaders. The defendants argued that it was just a bunch of online chatter that did not constitute strong connections, let alone a conspiracy between the parties involved. Nobody had known Mr. Fields before, they pointed out, and he was not involved in organizing the event.

The four-week trial, which was long delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, underscored how much the rally organizers and their groups were already sidelined, quarreled and financially tense after the violent debacle in Charlottesville. Richard Spencer, the most prominent leader of the Alt-Right at the time, who defended himself during the trial, described the 2020 case as “financially crippling”. Seven defendants ignored the trial and are treated separately by the court.

The unspecified punitive damages were intended as a deterrent to a similar rally, said Roberta Kaplan, the senior attorney who organized the case through a nonprofit called Integrity First for America.

But when many players have been pushed aside, the ideology has not. Over the past few decades, the movement has rebounded when far right groups have lost in court.

“While some of the messengers have been gutted, the mainstream versions of their hate propaganda continue to have real currency, with the general public guaranteeing that the violence of the fringe right-wing groups will unfortunately continue,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

In order to prove that the violence was predictable, the plaintiffs emphasized how often in advance the idea of ​​running over protesters with cars had arisen.

Samantha Froelich, who was together with two of the main organizers in the run-up to the rally but has since left the movement, testified that at a party in the Fash Loft earlier this summer, short for, beating protesters with cars was discussed fascist, the nickname for Mr. Spencer’s apartment in Alexandria, Virginia.

After the violence, Matthew Parrott – one of the leaders of the now defunct Traditionalist Workers Party, which was modeled after the NSDAP – and the others celebrated. “Charlottesville was a tremendous victory,” he said in a post. “The Alt-Right is not a pathetic and faceless Internet fad, but a terrifying force in street fighting.”

While the plaintiffs’ case lasted three weeks and 36 witnesses, the defendants rested after a day and a half.

The defendants have made four broad arguments. First, they argued that while others might deplore their views, the First Amendment allowed them. Second, they acted in self-defense. Third, that it was the police’s fault not to tell the opposing sides apart. Fourth, that neither of them could foresee what Mr. Fields was doing because nobody knew him.

The trial brought to life the hatred and anger of far-right groups, particularly on the streets of Charlottesville. A torchlight march on the eve of the rally, during which hundreds of men chanted racist slogans, was reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi marches. The testimony as well as the many videos and social media posts presented were flooded with the iconography of hatred, with Nazi symbols and stiff-armed salutes, with admiration for Hitler and claims that non-white races were inferior.

Supporters of the defendants held an online cheering section full of swear words against blacks and Jews, while the defendants made their own comments. In an online interview, Michael Hill, 69, president of the League of the South, which wants to establish a white ethno-state, described the courtroom as the “front line” in battle.

During his testimony, Mr. Hill was asked to read part of a pledge he had posted online. “I promise to be a white racist, racist, anti-Semite, homophobe, xenophobia, Islamophobic and any other kind of phobia that benefits my people, so help me God,” he read with obvious enthusiasm. He added, “I still hold those views.”

White racist lawyers had argued that such hate speech was insufficient to prove the plaintiffs’ case.

“They proved to you that the alt-right is the alt-right – they are racists; they are anti-Semites, ”said James Kolenich, one of the defense attorneys, in closing arguments. “But what does that mean to prove a conspiracy?”

During the trial, Judge Norman K. Moon said that in a criminal case, the jury needed to determine guilt “beyond reasonable doubt” but that in this type of civil case they would need to determine that there was “preponderance of evidence” that more than 50 percent, substantiated the allegations.