CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Years after a white nationalist rally erupted into violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, a trial is set to begin Tuesday for one of the people accused of using flaming torches to intimidate counterprotesters.
The trial of Jacob Joseph Dix, 29, of Clarksville, Ohio, would be the first test of a 2002 law that makes it a crime to burn something to intimidate and cause fear of injury or death. Lawmakers passed the law after the state Supreme Court ruled that a cross-burning statute used to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members was unconstitutional.
On the night of August 11, 2017, several hundred white nationalists marched through the University of Virginia campus, many carrying torches and some chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” Two days of demonstrations were organized in part to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. This was believed to be the largest gathering of white nationalists in a decade.
Indictments unsealed last year revealed that 11 people had been involved accused of intimidation by fire, but prosecutors have not said whether any other suspects have been charged. So far, five people have pleaded guilty to the charges. Dix is the first to stand trial.
After the collision at university, Violence broke out the next day when a “Unite the Right” rally was planned. After police declared the rally an unlawful assembly and the crowd began to disperse, James Alex Fields Jr., a white supremacist from Maumee, Ohio, deliberately rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and dozens were injured. Fields do serving a life sentence for murder and hate crimes.
Dix told the Daily Progress newspaper that he has changed in the past seven years.
“I am on trial for a past life,” he told the newspaper during a court hearing in January.
Dix’s attorney, Peter Frazier, has argued in court documents that the white nationalists were expressing freedom of speech protected under the First Amendment.
Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor was appointed special prosecutor in the case after a judge granted a request by Dix’s attorney to remove Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney James Hingeley’s office from the case due to a conflict of interest involving a assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney was involved.
The trial in Albemarle Circuit Court is expected to last about a week.