Jury slaps Charlottesville 'Unite The Right' organizers with millions in damages

Jury Slaps Unite The Right Organizers With Millions In Damages Over Racist Violence

A panel of 11 jurors in Charlottesville, Virginia, decided against a group of white nationalist defendants and ordered them to pay millions in damages on Tuesday, concluding a lengthy and unconventional trial that sought to hold them financially accountable for working to spread hate.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict on two main claims, which included whether the defendants conspired to commit racially motivated violence.

Still, the defendants will likely be forced to pay six-figure damages each to nine plaintiffs who joined the August 2017 demonstrations against the “Unite the Right” rally ― two days of clashes between far-right extremists and counterprotesters that left one woman dead, dozens injured and a scar on modern American history.

The jury’s decision signals a warning to right-wing extremist groups operating nationwide, and may offer a blueprint for future cases like it. Plaintiffs employed the KKK Act of 1871, a law meant to weaken the Ku Klux Klan, which permits civil lawsuits to be brought in federal court against anyone who conspires to commit racially motivated violence.

Two attorneys have been ordered to pay nearly $187,000 in legal fees after unsuccessfully challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election in a lawsuit that a federal judge called “defamatory,” an “abuse of the legal system” and a means to foment violence. In a ruling issued Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter ordered attorneys Gary D. Fielder and Ernest John Walker to cover the legal fees incurred by Facebook, the voting company Dominion, the nonprofit the Center for Tech and Civic Life, and officials with the states of Pennsylvania and Michigan.

An autopsy report on Brian Laundrie found he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, a lawyer for his family told media outlets Tuesday. Laundrie’s body was found in a Florida nature preserve near his North Port, Florida, home over a month ago after a massive search. He was the person of interest in the death of his fiancée, Gabby Petito, who was found strangled to death in Wyoming in September.

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