Jury finds Charlottesville far-right organizers liable on state civil conspiracy charges

Jurors on Tuesday found leaders of a deadly 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, liable for civil conspiracy under a state law and awarded more than $25 million in damages to nine people who suffered physical and emotional injuries during the two-day protest.

The 11-person jury, however, could not reach a consensus on two key federal conspiracy claims: "conspiracy to interfere with civil rights" and "action for neglect to prevent". The split verdict came after a month-long trial in US District Court in Charlottesville.

The federal law that the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on was the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which was designed to protect newly emancipated slaves from acts of intimidations by Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. The lawyers for the plaintiffs said they would consider seeking a retrial on the federal charges.

The nine plaintiffs consisted of students and staff at the University of Virginia, ministers, doctors and businesspersons of various races and backgrounds, according to the lawsuit. Four of them were struck in the car attack on Aug. 12, 2017 that killed a 32-year-old woman and injured dozens of people.

Through a statement posted Tuesday on Integrity First for America, a nonprofit that organized the case, the plaintiffs celebrated the verdict as a victory for holding the march's organizers accountable.

"Our single greatest hope is that today's verdict will encourage others to feel safer raising our collective voices in the future to speak up for human dignity and against white supremacy," they said.

Roberta A. Kaplan and Karen L. Dunn, co-counsels for the plaintiffs, said in a statement that they were thrilled to see the jury's delivery of a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs.

"The evidence was overwhelming that leaders of the white supremacist movement from all around the country planned for months to bring violence and intimidation to the streets of Charlottesville and that our brave clients, among many others, were injured when they dared to stand up for their values," they said.

"Today's verdict sends a loud and clear message that facts matter, the law matters, and that the laws of this country will not tolerate the use of violence to deprive racial and religious minorities of the basic right we all share to live as free and equal citizens," they added in the statement.

The lawsuit, titled Sines vs. Kessler, named 24 defendants, but seven of them did not respond to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs have won default judgement against them after the mixed verdict was announced.

Hundreds of white nationalists gathered at Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally on Aug 11 and Aug 12, 2017 to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

The protest quickly turned deadly when James Alex Fields Jr, reportedly an admirer of Hitler, deliberately rammed his car into counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of people. Fields is now serving multiple life sentences in prison for murder and hate crimes.

During a march at the University of Virginia a night before the demonstration, the protesters chanted "Jews will not replace us" while surrounding counter-protesters and throwing tiki torches at them.

According to Integrity First for America, the plaintiffs were "pushed, kicked, punched, and pepper sprayed by participants in the conspiracy". The organization also said that while some of the plaintiffs' severe physical injuries will heal over time, the same is not true in regards to the psychological harm they suffered from experiencing the trauma.

The defendants used First Amendments to defend their rights. They said they acted in self-defense and blamed the police for failing to separate the two sides. Many of them tried to distance themselves from Fields, one of the 24 defendants named, and claimed that they could not anticipate what Fields did because they did not know him in advance.

After the 2017 rally, then President Donald Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides", a statement that angered many in the country, who criticized him for not denouncing the protesters.