(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The George Soros-backed district attorney who began charging the infamous 2017 Charlottesville torch marchers last year has been ordered to recuse his entire office over its ties to Black Lives Matter and other counter-protestors.
Judge H. Thomas Padrick Jr. reportedly said that the entire Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office has an “appearance” of conflict of interest, and therefore can’t prosecute its case against torch marcher Joseph Dix.
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.
Tufts reportedly took the stand Monday, arguing that he wasn’t a prosecutor in 2017. He also bristled at the notion that his case is politically motivated.
“I’m not prosecuting an idea,” Tufts testified, accordin got The Daily Progress. “They carried a torch, they surrounded a group of people, and they wouldn’t let them out.”
Charlottesville D.A Jim Hingeley, who made it a campaign promise to prosecute torch-carriers when he was running for office, reportedly told the judge that he wants his office to stay on the case.
When the judge asked him why he was prosecuting the torch-marchers six years after the fact, Hingeley reportedly answered: “Many things … The investigation had to be reinitiated.”
After the judge’s ruling, Tufts reportedly refused to shake the hand of defense attorney Peter Frazier, who successfully motioned for the recusal.
Legal pundits also weighed in on the landmark ruling.
“It’s pretty unusual that a whole prosecutor’s office would be recused,” University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told The Daily Progress. “I think that’s pretty rare.”
The judge’s order reportedly only applied to the Dix case, but could be applied to the other defendants.
Of the handful of torch-marchers to be charged by Hingeley’s office, four of them have been convicted and two sentenced to six-month jail stints. At least four other defendants could have trials this year.
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.
Individuals convicted under the law face one to five years imprisonment.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
