Charlottesville trial: prosecutors say driver had hate on his mind

Defense says James Fields ‘felt he was in danger’ as jury prepares to deliberate on Friday morning

A prosecutor has told a jury that James Alex Fields Jr had hate and violence in his mind when he deliberately drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters at a white nationalist rally, killing one woman, injuring dozens and leaving bodies strewn on the ground.

As prosecutors urged jurors to find Fields guilty of first-degree murder and other felonies for the deadly August 2017 crash, his lawyers made a final attempt to convince them that Fields had plowed into the crowd out of fear.

The jury is scheduled to begin deliberating the case Friday morning.

During closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors portrayed Fields as a white nationalist who became angry after police forced crowds at the rally to disband. The police action followed violent clashes between the white nationalists who descended on Charlottesville to protest plans to remove a statute of the Confederate general Robert E Lee and counter-demonstrators who showed up to oppose the white nationalists.

The senior assistant commonwealth’s attorney Nina-Alice Antony reminded the jurors about a text message sent by Fields the day before the rally that included an image of Adolf Hitler. Fields sent the text to his mother in response to her plea for him to be careful. Fields wrote: “We’re not the one (sic) who need to be careful,” accompanied by Hitler’s image.

Antony also repeatedly reminded the jurors about a meme Fields posted on Instagram three months before the crash. The image shows bodies tossed into the air after a car plows into a crowd identified as “protesters”.

What happened in Charlottesville on 12 August?

White nationalists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest against a plan to remove a statue of Robert E Lee, the Confederacy’s top general in the American civil war.

Demonstrators chanted racist statements, carried antisemitic placards and held torches during the “Unite the Right” rally, which was organised by white nationalist Jason Kessler.

The march was met by anti-fascist demonstrators, and some skirmishes broke out before James Fields, 20, allegedly ploughed a car into a group of counter-demonstrators.

Civil rights activist Heather Heyer, 32, died and others were injured. Fields has been charged with murder.

“What we have is a man who had a decision, and he decides to turn his Instagram post into reality,” she said.

The defense attorney Denise Lunsford urged the jury to consider the chaos earlier that day, when street fights broke out between the two groups and teargas was thrown.

Lunsford said Fields had urine thrown at him, had been yelled at by counter-protesters and found himself alone and unprotected as he attempted to leave Charlottesville and drive back to his home in Maumee, Ohio. She said he saw a large crowd down the street surrounding two other cars and feared he would be attacked.

“Look at the circumstances as they appeared to him,” Lunsford said. “He says he felt he was in danger, there were people coming at him.”

Antony told the jury no one was near Fields’ car when he drove into the crowd. She said he idled in his car for more than a minute before backing up, then speeding into the crowd.

“He gets toward that group and he goes for them,” she said.

Fields, 21, faces charges of first-degree murder in the death of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal and civil rights activist who was killed. He also faces five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding and a count of leaving the scene of an accident.

Lunsford urged the jury to find Fields guilty of “no more than” the lesser charges of manslaughter in Heyer’s death and unlawful wounding in the injuries he caused to others.

In testimony earlier Thursday, a man who was with Fields shortly before the crash said he appeared calm and “maybe a little bit scared”.

Joshua Matthews said he met Fields in a Charlottesville park where white nationalists had gathered. After police declared an “unlawful assembly”, Fields, Matthews and two other people decided to walk together “as it would probably be more safe”, Matthews said.

He said while they were walking, a group of “antifas”, short for anti-fascists, yelled at them. He said Fields yelled something back, although he said he couldn’t remember what Fields said.

The defense also called to the stand Dwayne Dixon, who said he was a member of Redneck Revolt, a national network of militant anti-fascist, anti-racist groups, and he was armed with an AR-15 assault rifle. He claimed in an earlier social media post that he had scared Fields away from a park where counter-protesters had gathered about an hour before Fields plowed his car into the crowd.

Dwayne Dixon testified that he saw a gray “muscle car” drive by several times. He said he yelled “Get the [expletive] out of here” at the car while wearing his gun slung over his shoulder. He testified that he could not see the driver because the car had tinted windows. Dixon has claimed previously that he used his gun to scare off a man he believes was Fields.

Dixon said he believed that was about 30 minutes to an hour before Fields slammed into the group with his car.

The Associated Press contributed to this report