Avowed white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. was handed his second life sentence in as many months on Monday, the Associated Press reports.
Fields, 22, faced sentencing for purposely driving his car into anti-racism protesters during the white nationalist Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, killing Heather Heyer and injuring multiple people.
A state jury recommended life, plus 419 years, and Judge Richard Moore agreed.
That being said, the sentence was mostly symbolic as Fields had been already sentenced to life in prison in late June on federal hate crime charges.
“For his purposes, he has one life to give, so this is a largely academic exercise,” Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University told the Associated Press.