News Roundup

Published for NC Criminal Law on December 14, 2018.

As Charlottesville newspaper The Daily Progress reports, late last week a Virginia jury convicted James Alex Fields Jr. of first-degree murder and several other charges arising from his attack on people gathered to protest a white supremacist rally in August of last year.  On Tuesday, the jury recommended that Fields be sentenced to life in prison for the offenses.  In a violent bookend to an already disturbing series of events in Charlottesville, Fields drove a car into a crowd of protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of others.  Fields also faces federal hate crime charges, though a trial date for those charges has not yet been set.  Keep reading for more news. Charlottesville.  In the immediate aftermath of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, a report from VICE News correspondent Elle Reeve provided an unfiltered look at the rally and its participants.  Earlier this year, Reeve reconnected with the central figures in the so called “alt-right” movement to see how they had fared in the year following Charlottesville.  That report is available here. Aguilar.  A few weeks ago, the News Roundup noted that the case of kidnapped teenager Hania Aguilar had taken a sad turn as she had been found dead.  As WRAL reports, authorities have arrested a suspect in the case, Michael Ray McLellan, and now questions have emerged about DNA evidence that reportedly linked McLellan to a 2016 sexual assault but that was not acted upon.  According to the WRAL report, the state crime lab discovered in 2017 that [...]