(Ken Silva, Headline USA) While hundreds of Jan. 6 protestors were pardoned by newly inaugurated President Donald Trump, a tiki torch marcher from the infamous 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally was just sentenced to a shocking five years imprisonment.
The defendant, Augustus Sol Invictus (who was born Austin Mitchell Gillespie), will reportedly have to serve about nine months in jail, with the remainder of his sentence having been suspended by a judge earlier this month.
Invictus, who was allegedly the author of the “official manifesto” of the 2017 Unite the Right rally, was charged in July 2023 with a little-used law that makes it a crime to burn objects with intent to intimidate.
Another torch marcher, Jacob Joseph Dix, had his case tossed last July after a jury was gridlocked, but Invictus wasn’t as unfortunate. He was found guilty last October and sentenced on Jan. 10. Along with having to serve nine months in jail, he must serve two years of supervised probation when he gets out.
The Charlottesville rally turned deadly the day after the torch march, when a 20-year-old Ohio man rammed his vehicle into a group of counterprotesters and killed a local activist. The driver, James Alex Fields Jr., was convicted of murder and given life imprisonment.
The law being used to pursue the peaceful protestors from the night before was enacted by the state in 2002 in response to Ku Klux Klan cross-burnings.
It was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately found the law constitutional in a 6-3 vote.
Charlottesville’s Soros-backed D.A Jim Hingeley made it a campaign promise in 2019 to prosecute torch-carriers. His predecessor, Robert Tracci, had declined to press charges.
According to The Daily Progress, the main prosecutor of the torch marchers, W. Lawton Tufts, was found to have a relationship with groups such as Black Lives Matter and Showing Up for Racial Justice. Tufts reportedly has offered to research legal issues for people and groups that opposed Unite the Right.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
