Ohioan faces hate-crime charges for Charlottesville
RICHMOND, Va. — The Ohio man accused of killing a woman when he plowed a car into a crowd of people protesting a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, now faces federal hate-crime charges.
The Department of Justice announced that an indictment returned Wednesday charges James Alex Fields Jr., 21, of Maumee, Ohio, with 30 crimes, including one count of a hate crime resulting in the death of Heather Heyer, and 28 other hate crimes involving an attempt to kill dozens of other people who were injured. Another charge accuses him of “racially motivated violent interference.”
“Last summer’s violence in Charlottesville cut short a promising young life and shocked the nation,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “Today’s indictment should send a clear message to every would-be criminal in America that we aggressively prosecute violent crimes of hate that threaten the core principles of our nation.”
Authorities have said Fields, described by a former teacher as having a keen interest in Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler, drove his speeding car into a group of people demonstrating against the “Unite the Right” rally Aug. 12 that drew hundreds of white nationalists to the college town, where officials planned to remove a Confederate monument.
Fields already faces state charges including firstdegree murder and is set to face a jury trial this year. He has been in custody since the rally.
Critics of Sessions for the past year have been concerned about what they see as less-aggressive enforcement of federal civil rights laws, and especially the Justice Department’s lack of intervention against local police agencies with troubled relationships with minorities.
But in bringing the prosecution, Sessions appeared to assert himself as independent from President Donald Trump — who blamed the violence on both sides and was accused of emboldening racists — and suggested that the Justice Department would continue to treat racially motivated acts of violence as hate crimes.