‘Unite the Right’ trial jurors hear closings in Va.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. » White nationalists “planned, executed and then celebrated” racially motivated violence that killed one counterprotester and injured dozens, lawyers for nine people hurt during the 2017 “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville said Thursday as they urged jurors to hold some of the country’s most well-known white supremacists accountable.
Their closing arguments in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville came in the trial of a civil lawsuit alleging that two dozen white nationalists, neo-Nazis and white supremist organizations conspired to commit violence during two days of demonstrations.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs showed the jury dozens of text messages, chat room exchanges and social media postings by the rally’s main planners, including some peppered with racial epithets and talk of “cracking skulls” of anti-racist counterprotesters.
“We sued the people who were responsible — the leaders, the promoters, the group leaders, the people who brought the army, the people who were the most violent members of the army. Those are the people who we ask you to hold accountable today,” said attorney Karen Dunn.
Hundreds of white nationalists descended on Charlottesville on Aug. 11-12, 2017, ostensibly to protest the city’s plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
During a march on the University of Virginia campus, white nationalists surrounded counterprotesters, shouted “Jews will not replace us!” and threw burning tiki torches at them. The next day, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler rammed his car into a crowd, killing one woman and injuring others.
James Alex Fields Jr. of Maumee, Ohio, is serving life in prison for murder and hate crimes for the car attack. He is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which seeks monetary damages and a judgment that the defendants violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.
Other defendants used their closing arguments to distance themselves from Fields. Their attorneys told jurors that injuries suffered by the plaintiffs do not prove that the defendants entered into a conspiracy to commit violence.
Attorney James Kolenich, who represents Jason Kessler, the lead organizer of the rally, and two other defendants, said the plaintiffs’ lawyers have shown the defendants said “ridiculous” and “offensive” things, but have not proven a conspiracy.
“They’ve proven to you that the alt-right is the altright. They’re racists, they’re anti-Semites. No kidding. You knew that when you walked in here,” Kolenich said.
“What does that do to prove a conspiracy?” he said.
Kolenich said that when the defendants talked about violence before the rally, they were referring to fistfights, pushing and shoving, not plowing into a crowd with a car.
“None of these defendants could have foreseen what James Fields did,” Kolenich said.
Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who coined the term “alt-right” and represented himself at trial, told the jury he had no role in planning the events and did not commit acts of violence. Plaintiffs’ lawyers have portrayed Spencer as the leader of the torch rally.