James Fields convicted of murder in Charlottesville death https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/07/us/charlottesville-james-fields-trial/index.html James Alex Fields, who in August 2017 drove a car into a crowd protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was convicted Friday of first-degree murder and nine other charges. Fields, 21, was found guilty in the killing of Heather Heyer and faces a possible sentence of life in prison. Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal, was demonstrating with dozens of others against the "Unite the Right" rally when Fields drove his car into the crowd after a day of tense clashes between members of alt-right groups and those opposed to their presence. He was also found guilty of eight counts of malicious wounding and one count of failing to stop at an accident involving a death. The verdict followed a week of testimony and more than six hours of deliberations. Since Fields' trial began last week, prosecutors and defense attorneys have focused on his intent. The commonwealth argued that Fields intended to harm the counterprotesters. The defense says he was in a state of panic and acted in self-defense. The jury comprised seven women and five men. Fields' intentions questioned In her closing argument, defense lawyer Denise Lunsford described the incident as the result of a "perfect storm" of events over which Fields had no control, sending him into a panic. Earlier in the day, he was hit with something that could have been urine, she said. He had just left the company of people he was with earlier and felt vulnerable by himself, Lunsford said. She said he believed a group of protesters behind him was about to swarm his car, although no evidence was presented to support that. (More at above url)
Sorry this case didnt go the way of Zimmermans GWB.I do wonder if Fields would have been convicted if the women was black.
'Prosecutors also showed jurors a meme Fields posted on Instagram three months before the rally in which bodies are shown being thrown into the air after a car hits a crowd of people identified as protesters. He posted the meme publicly to his Instagram page and sent a similar image as a private message to a friend in May 2017. But Fields' lawyers told the jury that he drove into the crowd on the day of the rally because he feared for his life and was "scared to death" by earlier violence he had witnessed. A video of Fields being interrogated after the crash showed him sobbing and hyperventilating after he was told a woman had died and others were seriously injured. The jury will reconvene Monday to determine a sentence. Under the law, jurors can recommend from 20 years to life in prison. Fields is eligible for the death penalty if convicted of separate federal hate crime charges. No trial has been scheduled yet.'
This case is such an outrage. If you reversed the races of those involved, Fields would be another Trayvon Martin, an innocent young man caught up in racist violence. The CNN article does not even attempt to report the facts. They said he drove into a crowd of people. They don't mention that those people were rioting in the street and pounding on cars and attempting to pull people out of them. If you think stopping and cooperating with them is a wise course of action, perhaps you should ask Reginald Denny, provided he can even talk. He was a truck driver who came into a riot scene in the Rodney King LA riots years ago and was pulled from his truck and nearly killed because of the crime of being white. It is a shame that a young man's life has been ruined because of actions of the Charlottesville police and mayor and Virginia state authorities. They forced legal demonstrators out of the approved location and let them be set upon by a mob of violent thugs, then stood by and let the thugs run wild. As usual, the media narrative is that violence "broke out", and that of course the white conservatives were solely to blame. The police lost control of their own streets, either through incompetence or deliberately, and this poor guy found himself in a terrible situation.
I forgot why you've been in ignore for years. Well, got my giggles on the Mueller news, back to the deplorable corner you go.