Jury Asks Life Sentence For Driver Charged With Charlottesville Protests Murder - Reports

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 12th December, 2018) A US jury has recommended a life sentence for a man who drove his car into a group of counterprotesters killing one person during a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia last August, media reported on Tuesday.

A Charlottesville jury recommended on Tuesday that James Alex Fields spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others on August 12, 2017, local newspaper The Daily Progress reported.

The jury also recommended a $100,000 fine for the first-degree murder conviction including a total of 419 years on five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding and one count of hit-and-run, the report said.

Fields' sentencing is scheduled for March 29, according to the newspaper.

On August 11, 2017, torch-wielding white supremacists held a rally near the University of Virginia which resulted in a brawl with a group of counterprotesters.

The next day, a major Unite the Right rally gathered thousands of far-right nationalists in downtown Charlottesville, protesting against the authorities' plans to remove a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a local square.

The rally led to violence between the demonstrators and counterprotesters, culminating in the car ramming attack by Fields.