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Jury finds Unite the Right defendants liable for more than $26 million in damages | CNN
Unite the Right rally organizers found liable for violating Virginia conspiracy statute; plaintiffs are awarded millions in damages.
www.cnn.com
A jury has awarded more than $26 million in damages after finding the White nationalists who organized and participated in a violent 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, liable on a state conspiracy claim and other claims.
The jury in the federal civil trial said Tuesday it could not reach a verdict on two federal conspiracy claims.
The violence during the Unite the Right rally turned the Virginia city into another battleground in America's culture wars and highlighted growing polarization. It was also an event that empowered White supremacists and nationalists to demonstrate their beliefs in public rather than just online.
The first federal conspiracy claim was the most prominent against the defendants because it alleged the defendants conspired to commit racially motivated violence while the second alleged the defendants had knowledge of a conspiracy and failed to prevent it.
The events surrounding August 11-12, 2017, saw White nationalists and supremacists marching through Charlottesville and the University of Virginia campus chanting, "Jews will not replace us," "You will not replace us" and "Blood and soil," a phrase evoking Nazi philosophy on ethnic identity.
The violence -- which enveloped the rally to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee -- reached a crescendo when James Alex Fields Jr., who was protesting the statue's removal, sped his car through a crowd of counterprotesters, injuring dozens and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
This is a small victory however these white trash rednecks don't have any money to pay the damages. Also I'm not confident that this will send a strong enough message to them to just stay home keeping their racist hatred strictly anonymous on the Internet.