White supremacist sentenced to life in prison on hate crime charges in Charlottesville attack

The white supremacist who killed a woman and injured dozens of others after driving his car into a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville has received a life sentence on federal hate crime charges.

James Alex Fields Jr. was sentenced to life in prison on Friday after pleading guilty to 29 hate crime charges in the attack that killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injured 35 people who were protesting a white supremacist rally in August 2017, NBC News reports. Fields pleaded guilty as part of a deal to avoid the death penalty.

In court on Friday, Fields said that "I apologize for the hurt and loss I've caused" and that "every day I think about how things could have gone differently and how I regret my actions," The Associated Press reports. He was previously convicted on first-degree murder charges, with the jury recommending he receive a life sentence.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Fields' attorneys had asked for less than life in prison, saying, "the essential property of mercy is that it applies to the undeserving," The New York Times reports. But prosecutor Christopher Kavanaugh asked the judge to impose a life sentence, writing per The Washington Post that Fields "has demonstrated that he feels no remorse for his actions and continues to espouse his hateful ideology."