Defense attorney Peter Frazier urged a judge Wednesday to dismiss his client’s felony intimidation charge stemming from his participation in a mob of torch-carrying racists who marched on the University of Virginia grounds seven years ago.
Frazier said prosecutors have unfairly targeted Jacob Joseph Dix, singling out the blonde-haired, square-jawed, business-suited 29-year-old Ohio man sitting next to him at the hearing in Albemarle County Circuit Court.
Torch-bearing protester who called for race war in 2017 charged
“Can we all take a look at Jacob? He is the prototype of a German,” Frazier stated. “He’s the one they want removed from court because he looks like a Nazi.”
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While he repeatedly invoked the N-word at Wednesday’s hearing, Frazier argued for a ban on such epithets at next month’s trial. Judge H. Thomas Padrick Jr. agreed that he intended to require that the Commonwealth’s opening statement avoid such language and would likely require expert witnesses to first present their evidence out of reach of the jury.
“I think the labels will inflame the jury,” Padrick said. “We will discuss this on the day of trial.”
The trial may present Frazier with some challenges, as his client may not only look like a Nazi, but may have dressed like one.
On August 11, 2017, Dix was photographed among the crowd of torch-wielding white supremacists on the UVa grounds chanting “Jews will not replace us” and the Nazi slogan “Blood and Soil.” Dix, torch in hand, wore a T-shirt adorned with the number 88, a neo-Nazi abbreviation for “Heil Hitler” (H is the eighth letter of the alphabet).
Frazier maintains that Dix stuck to “You will not replace us” and did not participate in the violence that erupted when the mob overtook a smaller group of counterprotesters at the base of the Thomas Jefferson statue outside the school’s iconic Rotunda.
“Jacob didn’t do any of that,” Frazier said. “He’s just standing there.”
Frazier claims prosecutors are trying to criminalize unpopular opinions.
“It’s about good guys versus bad guys,” Frazier said. “That’s what this all boils down to.”
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During Wednesday’s hearing, which lasted two hours, Frazier argued five motions alleging a variety of things, including selective prosecution, unconstitutional vagueness in the impeachment law and a prosecution driven by political animus.
“They think Jacob is bad and that the opinions he espoused were bad,” Frazier said.
The upcoming trial, which begins June 4, marks the first major test of the charges announced last year by Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley, whose 2019 election ousted a prosecutor who refused to impose such charges. Hingeley’s office has obtained around a dozen felony charges against participants in the march which took place on the eve of the planned Unite the Right rally.
In this photo, Jacob Joseph Dix is seen participating in the torch-bearing white supremacist mob marching on the grounds of the University of Virginia on Friday, August 11, 2017.
ALBEMARLE COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT
Both the march and the aborted rally the following day erupted in violence as white nationalists and counterprotesters clashed. Notably, after police dispersed would-be protesters, another Ohio man sped a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing an anti-racism activist named Heather Heyer.
Frazier argued that torches are a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.
“It is an absolutely symbolic speech,” Frazier argued, recalling the black armbands that the United States Supreme Court defended in the Tinker v. Des Moines from 1967, about high school students protesting the Vietnam War.
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The racial intimidation arson law was created by the General Assembly in 2002 after the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the state’s old cross-burning statute, designed to prosecute members of the Ku Klux Klan, was unconstitutional. The country’s highest court later narrowed the scope of the cross-burning law, but did not overturn it, so both laws remain in effect. Dix could face up to five years in prison if he is convicted.
Before the hearing, legal analyst David Heilberg predicted that Frazier’s constitutional challenges would not result in a dismissal by the trial court, and the judge agreed.
“We all know the statutes are presumptively constitutional,” Padrick said at Wednesday’s hearing.
White nationalists lead a torchlight march through the grounds of the University of Virginia on Friday, August 11, 2017.
ANDREW SHURTLEFF, THE DAILY PROGRESS
That provided an opportunity for Shannon Taylor, the special prosecutor brought in from Henrico County. She responded to Frazier’s affection for the First Amendment by stating that it was not just torches that were illegal. Taylor said marches, spit-splattered chants and surrounding and beating enemies at the base of the Jefferson statue should all be considered.
“It’s impossible to isolate each of those concepts,” Taylor said.
Taylor came into this case after Padrick ousted Hingeley earlier this year at Frazier’s request. The defense attorney alleged that some of Hingeley’s pretrial statements showed bias against the defendants and that one of his prosecutors had been too welcoming to counterprotesters in 2017.
While Hingeley’s office obtained five convictions with sentences of six and 12 months in prison, Frazier told the court that he noted that each of the five convictions was a guilty plea by an out-of-state defendant held without bail before of the trial.
“They pleaded guilty to get out of jail,” Frazier said.
Padrick took up Frazier’s two motions to declare the law unconstitutional. The same goes for Frazier’s request to move the trial to a new location. And Padrick rejected a motion to dismiss based on selective prosecution.
Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Loses Another Bid to Prosecute 2017 Torch Case
For Heilberg, the legal analyst, this case presents some interesting procedural issues.
“Everyone believes in the First Amendment, but when it leads to violence, the First Amendment doesn’t protect absolutely everything,” Heilberg told The Daily Progress.
And while he wasn’t surprised that the judge didn’t act on the constitutional claims, Heilberg said he sees the validity of Frazier’s strategy.
“You have to raise it so you can appeal it,” Heilberg said.
Through its subpoenas, the prosecution revealed that it plans to call at least a dozen witnesses, including UVa Lawn resident and well-known political pundit Larry Sabato, who has been a persistent critic of the 2017 torchlight march.
And although Frazier peppered his arguments with mentions of such marches around the world, including contemporary Norse festivals and an 1860 campaign rally for Abraham Lincoln, the prosecution team promised a different narrative.
Ohio man who participated in torchlight mob at UVa in 2017 goes on trial
“How do we get into the mind of the accused?” asked Henrico Commonwealth’s Deputy Attorney Nael Abouzaki, who is assisting Taylor with the prosecution. “We cannot divorce actions from rhetoric.”
Abouzaki promised to bring in a Jewish history professor to share the history of torches during the Holocaust, something he implied many of the 300 protesters should know.
“It’s not like they’re trying to create a tropical aesthetic,” Abouzaki said, “or repel mosquitoes.”
Spencer (434) 960-9343
hspencer@dailyprogress.com
@HawesSpencer on X
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