The neo-Nazi thug who plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville in 2017 still doesn’t understand or refuses to understand the seriousness of what he did. That’s the only thing you can conclude from papers filed by lawyers for James Fields on Friday. They begged a federal judge for mercy, saying he deserves less than a life sentence when he faces the music for killing Heather Heyer and gravely injuring dozens more.
Lawyers for James Alex Fields Jr., 22, said in a sentencing memo submitted in court documents Friday that the defendant should not spend his entire life in prison because of his age, a traumatic childhood and a history of mental illness. Fields pleaded guilty to federal hate crimes in March and is set to be sentenced on June 28.
“No amount of punishment imposed on James can repair the damage he caused to dozens of innocent people. But this Court should find that retribution has limits,” his attorneys wrote.
(snip)
The attorneys for Fields said that giving him something less than a life sentence would be akin to an “expression of mercy” and a “conviction that no individual is wholly defined by their worst moments.”
Hogwash. Video shows Fields waiting a second or too before tromping down on the accelerator and bulldozing through that crowd. He knew damn well what he was doing. And now he’s whining for mercy? He certainly had none for those people in the street. Looks like we have another crying Nazi alongside Chris Cantwell.
This was an act of cold-blooded murder. I mean cold-blooded. Anyone that cold-blooded should never be allowed to live among us again. Prosecutors are of the same mind. They noted he still has no remorse whatsoever for what he did. Among other things, he was trashing Heather’s mom, Susan Bro, as late as last month. It’s hard to believe he doesn’t know that Bro had to bury Heather’s ashes in a secret location due to relentless trolling and harassment from Fields’ Daily Stormer buddies. Apparently Fields’ lawyers don’t know that he was sentenced to life plus 419 years on state charges in Virginia—meaning that any “mercy” granted at the federal level will be a pig in a poke.
There are only two options for dealing with Fields—either lock him up in ADX Florence or put him in a maximum-security prison under an alias. While my initial gut reaction was that ADX Florence was built for people like him, I wondered if being locked in a cell for 23 hours would be appropriate for someone with mental issues. But if he were to be in a regular prison, he would have to be under an alias in order to protect him from being attacked. What is beyond dispute, though, is that this crying Nazi has absolutely, positively forfeited his right to ever live among us again.