A white nationalist who drove his car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, killing one of them, has been found guilty of first-degree murder and nine other counts.
The jury had deliberated for about seven hours before convicting James Fields of all charges.
Defense attorneys never disputed that Fields was behind the wheel of the car that sent bodies flying when it crashed into a crowd. Instead, Fields’ lawyers suggested during the two-week trial that he felt intimidated by a hostile crowd and acted to protect himself.
The car-ramming capped a day of tension and physical clashes between hundreds of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who had assembled in Charlottesville to protest against the removal of statues commemorating two Confederate generals of the U.S. Civil War.
