The two men found guilty of maliciously wounding a black man after last year's white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., have been sentenced to prison time. Jacob Goodwin has been sentenced to serve eight years in prison for his role in the beating, while Alex Ramos has been sentenced to six.
Goodwin, 23, and Ramos, 34, had been convicted in separate jury trials earlier this year of playing a significant role in the savage assault of DeAndre Harris. In images of the incident, which circulated widely on social media afterward, several men can be seen kicking Harris and hitting him with poles as he lay crumpled on the ground.
Goodwin, who was sentenced to 10 years total, though two of those years were suspended, had been seen on the day of the rally day wearing white supremacist symbols, including some associated with neo-Nazi organizations.
In court he initially asserted that he was acting in self-defense after seeing Harris take a swing at another man, the leader of a North Carolina white nationalist group. That North Carolina man had indeed pressed charges against Harris — but Harris was acquitted of them just months before Goodwin's conviction.
Both Goodwin and Ramos apologized during their sentencing hearings, according to local TV station NBC 29.
Two other men were charged with malicious wounding for their role in the attack on Harris. Daniel Borden pleaded guilty in May and now awaits sentencing, while Tyler Davis is expected to face his trial later this year.
The prison sentences for Goodwin and Ramos come just over a year after white nationalists from across the country descended on the small Virginia city for the Unite the Right rally. Not long after a gathering on Aug. 12, 2017, violence left one counter-protester dead and many other people injured.
Another man involved in the rally, Richard Preston, was sentenced this week to four years in prison for a separate incident during the gathering. Reportedly an imperial wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, Preston had been convicted of firing a gun in the direction of a black counterprotester who was holding an improvised blowtorch, who later was found guilty of disorderly misconduct in his own right.
The confrontation, like the parking garage beating, was also caught on film.
Nearly two weeks ago, organizers of last year's Unite the Right rally marked its one-year anniversary with another rally in Washington, D.C., and their small gathering was overwhelmed by hundreds of counterdemonstrators.
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