https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottesville_car_attack#Investigation_and_prosecutionFBI Director Christopher A. Wray said that the [car] attack [by James Alex Fields Jr.] met the definition of domestic terrorism.[11] Fields was scheduled to appear in court on August 14.[6] He appeared via video from jail and was denied bail.[10] Fields said that he could not afford a lawyer; a private attorney was appointed by the judge, as a public defender could not be appointed due to a conflict of interest.[11][28
Hmmmm....
On July 5, 2018, Fields pleaded not guilty to all 30 counts of federal hate crime charges.[39]
The trial was set to begin on November 26, 2018.[32]
On December 7, 2018, Fields was found guilty of first-degree murder, hit and run, and eight counts of malicious wounding.[40]
It's possible they voted guilty because he's a racist jerk who has hit his own mother, a paraplegic.
It's also possible that he got inadequate defense. I really expected the D.A. to pull a Mueller on him and force him to take a plea so the facts of Antifa contributing to the accident would never be heard in court. Oh, the racist took a plea bargain and went to jail. Okay.
That doesn't explain the way an attacker's body was thrown off his car at the moment of impact (because he was attacking the driver before the impact.)
Charlottesville car attack suspect denied bail in first court appearance (CBS News)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cF9dngn8ZAThat doesn't explain the way a swarm of Antifa guys with clubs were all over his car a split second after the impact, and continued clubbing his car until he slammed the car in reverse, threw them off, and got away.
That doesn't explain how if he really wanted to kill people, he could have driven up onto the sidewalk instead of staying on the street, and killed a lot more.
He pleaded not guilty. But I'm not convinced that anyone, including his defense attorney, really wanted to help him explain the mitigating circumstances of wanting to escape Antifa beating on his car, or that anyone in the jury was exposed to the videos on youtube that explain the Antifa factor, that would have created reasonable doubt in the jurors.
I'm not saying Fields didn't commit a crime. I think he commited some lesser charge of manslaughter, he didn't deliberately try to kill Heather Heyer. She was just in the path when he was trying to escape an Antifa mob. But because of the profile of it, connected to the Charlottesville riots and the white supremacists, with whom Fields agrees and shares their ideology, and irregardlerss of the accident is himself a Nazi, I think there was an eagerness for political reasons to give him a maximum sentence and make it a hatecrime.
Dylan Roof walking into a Charleston church and shooting a bunch of black Christians, that's a hatecrime. But I'm still not convinced Fields' hitting Heyer with his car is truly race supremacist motivated. I'm not convinced he wanted to kill, or even saw, Heyer before the impact. He was found guilty for being a racist jerk, not for the actual crime.
