Jury recommends life plus 419 years for Charlottesville killer

A U.S. jury is recommending life in prison, plus 419 years, for a man convicted of killing a woman and injuring dozens when he drove his car into counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

James Alex Fields Jr. stood stoically with his hands folded in front of him as a court clerk read the verdict on Tuesday, which now must be taken under advisement by the judge, who will issue the final sentence.

Judge Richard Moore scheduled a sentencing hearing for March 29.

The jury reached its verdict after deliberating for about four hours over two days. Judges in Virginia often impose the sentence recommended by juries. Under state law, they can impose lower sentences than what the jury recommends, but cannot increase them.

Before issuing its recommendation, the jury asked Moore if the sentences would run consecutively or concurrently. He replied that sentences usually run consecutively, but that jurors could recommend concurrent sentences if they choose.

The jury deliberated for just under two hours Monday after hearing emotional testimony from the mother of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal and activist who was killed when Fields rammed his car into a crowd at a "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017.

Jurors also heard from several people who suffered severe injuries. A psychologist testifying for the defence said Fields has a long history of mental health issues, including bipolar disorder.

Heyer's mother, Susan Bro, told the jury her daughter's death has been like an "an explosion in our family."

"We are forever scarred by the pain," she said.

Jeanne (Star) Peterson said her life has been "a living nightmare" since she was hit by Fields' car. Her right leg was shattered, and she's had five surgeries to try to repair it. She also suffered a broken spine and still hasn't been able to return to work.

"I will be dealing with the aftermath of Fields' choices for the rest of my life," Peterson said.

Fields, 21, drove to Virginia from his home in Maumee, Ohio, to support the white nationalists. After the rally, as a large group of counterprotesters marched through Charlottesville singing and laughing, he stopped his car, backed up, then sped into the crowd, according to testimony from witnesses and video surveillance shown to jurors.

Wednesday Bowie, a counterprotester who got caught on the trunk of Fields' car when he backed up and was then slammed into a parked truck and thrown to the ground, told the jury that in addition to a broken pelvis and other physical injuries, she has been hospitalized three times for post-traumatic stress disorder over the past year.

"Please know that the world is not a safe place with Mr. Fields in it," she told the jury.

Testifying for the defence, University of Virginia School of Medicine professor and psychologist Daniel Murrie told the jury that while Fields was not legally insane at the time, he has a long history of mental health issues.

Fields had inexplicable volatile outbursts as a young child and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age six, Murrie said. He was later diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder, which the Mayo Clinic describes as an uncommon condition in which people avoid social activities, consistently shy away from interaction with others and have a limited range of emotional expression. 

Murrie said Fields went off his psychiatric medication at 18 and built an isolated "lifestyle centred around being alone."

A video of Fields shown to the jury during the first phase of the trial showed him sobbing and hyperventilating after he was told a woman had died and others were seriously injured.

Fields' lawyer Denise Lunsford called him a "mentally compromised individual" and urged the jury to consider his long history of mental health issues when considering a sentence.

The Unite the Right rally had been organized in part to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Hundreds of Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis and other white nationalists — emboldened by the election of U.S. President Donald Trump — streamed into the college town for one of the largest gatherings of white supremacists in a decade. Some dressed in battle gear.

Afterward, Trump inflamed tensions even further when he said "both sides" were to blame — a comment some saw as a refusal to condemn racism.

According to one of his former teachers, Fields was known in high school for being fascinated with Nazism and idolizing Adolf Hitler. Jurors were shown a text message he sent to his mother days before the rally that included an image of the notorious German dictator. When his mother pleaded with him to be careful, he replied: "We're not the one (sic) who need to be careful."

Fields is eligible for the death penalty if convicted of separate federal hate crime charges. No trial has been scheduled on those charges yet.