The self-proclaimed neo-Nazi who killed a woman when he plowed his car into crowd of counter-protesters at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been given a second life sentence plus 419 years in prison.
James Fields Jr., 22, was already sentenced to life in prison on 29 federal charges, including a hate crime for the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
A Virginia judge tacked on the additional life sentence for state charges on Monday. A Virginia jury convicted Fields in December of first-degree murder and nine other charges, including aggravated malicious wounding and hit and run. The jury recommended the sentence that Judge Richard Moore imposed Monday.
The attack occurred at the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, which was planned to protest the removal of Gen. Robert E. Lee statue. Fields ran his Dodge Challenger into the crowd of demonstrators, and in addition to killing Heyer, injured dozens of others.
President Trump generated controversy for his remarks in the wake of the incident, saying “both sides” were to blame for the violence. Trump later said that he was not referring to white supremacists, but rather to the people who “felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general.”
