Grand jury indicts torch carriers in 2017 Charlottesville white supremacist rally

At least three men who marched with blazing tiki torches at the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville are now facing criminal charges, according to indictments unsealed this week.

A grand jury in Virginia indicted “multiple individuals” who carried torches at the Unite the Right rally in August 2017, Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney James Hingeley said in a statement.

Indictments had been unsealed Tuesday for three defendants who were extradited from their home states: Tyler Bradley Dykes of Bluffton, S.C.; Dallas Medina of Ravenna, Ohio; and Will Zachary Smith of Nacona, Tex. Officials said additional indictments remain under seal.

Prosecutors allege the torch carriers violated a rarely enforced criminal statute, which makes it a crime to burn objects with intent to intimidate, when they marched around the University of Virginia campus on Aug. 11, 2017, while chanting “You will not replace us” and the Nazi slogan “Blood and soil.”

The Charlottesville white supremacist rally turned deadly the next day, when a man rammed his vehicle into a group of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring others. The driver, James Alex Fields Jr., was sentenced to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to federal hate crimes and was convicted in state court of first-degree murder and other charges. Others were charged with violating federal rioting law.

Burning objects with intent to intimidate is punishable in Virginia by one to five years in prison.

“You have to show that the conduct created a reasonable apprehension of death or bodily harm,” said Anne M. Coughlin, a U-Va. School of Law professor who for years has called on prosecutors to file charges against the torch carriers. “There is very strong evidence that these folks were here for the purpose of terrifying our Jewish friends and neighbors - people of color.”

The law was enacted in 2002 partly in response to the Ku Klux Klan, which was known for burning crosses in public to scare the Black population, and it is “tailor-made” for a criminal case against the torch carriers at the rally, Coughlin said.

But the case took nearly six years to get to the grand jury. Hingeley’s predecessor, former Albemarle County commonwealth’s attorney Robert N. Tracci, declined to seek charges against the torch carriers.

Tracci wrote in an opinion article from 2019 that under the Virginia law on burning objects, “The question could arise - and would in criminal law - as to whether carrying a burning torch falls within the definitional scope of burning an object.” Tracci could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

“He was voted out of office,” Coughlin said. “The voters replaced him, and one of Jim Hingeley’s promises - if you look at his campaign material, he said that he thought these charges should be brought.”

In his statement, Hingeley said his office “brings charges when appropriate.”

“This is our process regardless of how much time has passed or where the alleged offenders may be found,” he said, declining further comment.

Dykes and Smith were jailed, while Medina was released on bail, court records show. An attorney for Smith declined to comment. The others did not have attorneys listed in court records. Smith also was charged this year with illegal use of tear gas, and he has a hearing in Albemarle County Circuit Court scheduled for Friday.