{"id":24710,"date":"2018-12-08T00:22:33","date_gmt":"2018-12-08T00:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24710"},"modified":"2018-12-08T00:22:33","modified_gmt":"2018-12-08T00:22:33","slug":"charlottesville-james-alex-fields-guilty-of-first-degree-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24710","title":{"rendered":"Charlottesville: James Alex Fields guilty of first-degree murder"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A Virginia jury on Friday convicted James Alex Fields Jr<\/a> of first-degree murder in the death of Heather Heyer at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The jury deliberated for less than a day before convicting the 21-year-old of murder and several other\u00a0 charges stemming from the deadly confrontation that occurred after police had declared an unlawful assembly and cleared a park of white supremacists gathered for the “Unite the Right” rally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the incident, Fields slammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heyer and injuring dozens more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, Fields was photographed marching with Vanguard America, a neo-Nazi group, during the rally. Throughout the day, rally participants clashed with community members, anti-racists and anti-fascists across the city.<\/p>\n

Unite the Right, called to oppose Charlottesville’s decision to remove a Confederate statue, was the largest white nationalist rally in the US in recent decades.<\/p>\n

The rally brought out thousands of supporters of the\u00a0alt-right,<\/a>\u00a0a loosely-knit coalition of white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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A photo of Heather Heyer, who was killed during a white nationalist rally, sits on the ground at a memorial in Charlottesville, Virginia [Evan Vucci\/AP Photo]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Fields’s defence team did not contest that he was behind the wheel of the gray Dodge Challenger when it struck activists who had descended upon the Virginia city to counter a “Unite the Right” rally.\u00a0But they argued their client was “scared for his life”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The prosecution called multiple witnesses and victims who recounted in some cases what turned out to be life-altering injuries.<\/p>\n

The witnesses testified the event had become peaceful, “joyful” and “celebratory” after city authorities ordered the far right to disperse – countering the defence’s narrative of a hostile, frightening atmosphere at the time of the attack.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the week they presented jurors a SMS message Fields sent to his mother before departing for the rally after she had asked him to be careful. <\/p>\n

“We’re not the one who need to be careful” he replied, alongside a photo of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, whom he has long admired.<\/p>\n

Federal charges\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Separately, Fields also faces dozens of federal charges, including hate crimes, which could result in the death penalty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the wake of the deadly Charlottesville protest, several articles investigating Fields’s history found a lengthy\u00a0social media<\/a>\u00a0trail of neo-Nazi content and racist posts.<\/p>\n

Following the rally, far-right participants from across the country faced\u00a0legal backlash,<\/a>with a slew of civil suits targeting organisers.<\/p>\n

Heyer was among 18 people killed by white supremacists in the US last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League.White nationalist, neo-Nazi and far-right groups that took to the streets in Charlottesville saw\u00a0permits for a spate of subsequent public events<\/a>pulled or denied, while hosting services, social media outlets and tech companies\u00a0cracked down<\/a>\u00a0on far-right individuals and groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigations\u00a0released its annual hate crimes<\/a>report for 2017. According to the report’s findings, hate crimes grew for the third consecutive year, increasing by 17 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Virginia jury on Friday convicted James Alex Fields Jr of first-degree murder in the death of Heather Heyer at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.\u00a0 The jury deliberated for less than a day before convicting the 21-year-old of murder and several other\u00a0 charges stemming from the deadly confrontation that occurred after…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":24711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}