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CRS Reports & Analysis
Legal Sidebar
Charlottesville Car Crash Attack: Possibility of Federal
Criminal Prosecution
08/15/2017
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced a federal civil rights investigation into the incident in Charlottesville,
Virginia, in which a woman was killed and several others were injured when a car plowed into a group of counter-
protesters on a day when protesters had clashed with participants in a white supremacist rally. Virginia authrilie have
arrested the Ohio driver of the car and charged him with second degree murder, a cI me punishable under Virginia law
by imprisonment for not less than five or more than forty years.
For both c nituinaI and practical reasons, law enforcement is first and foremost a state responsibility. Nevertheless,
the protection of civil rights has been thought to be an important federal concern. It's too early to tell what, if any,
prosecutable federal offenses the Justice Department's investigation might discover. However, various civil rights and
terrorist offenses may be implicated.
Civil rights offenses: Media ropr have cited two potential civil rights violations - the federal hate crime offense and
the offense of interfering with federally protected activities. (For additional background on these offenses, see CRS
R43830. The federal hate crime atatujt- applies to anyone who willfully causes bodily injury to any person ...
because of the actual or perceived race ... of any person. The woman who was killed was white, and several of those
injured with her were African-American. Conviction under the hate crime statute would require, among other things,
evidence that the driver targeted his victims because of their race rather than because of their political beliefs, such as
their perceived anti-white supremacist views. In cases where a death results, the hate crime statute carries a sentence of
imprisonment for any term of years or for life.
The protected activities staue creates a number of civil rights crimes including those involving interference with the
access to public benefits, services, facilities, and accommodations. The statute also applies to anyone who by force ...
willfully injures ... any citizen because he ... has been ... participating lawfully in speech or peaceful assembly
relating to opposition to any denial of public benefits, services, facilities, or accommodations on the basis of race,
religion, or national origin. The Charlottesville attack xi2 tediy followed sometimes violent clashes between white
supremacist demonstrators and counter-demonstrators. Conviction would require, among other things, evidence that the
driver targeted his victims because they had participated in lawful speech or peaceful assembly in opposition to the
denial of access to federal or state benefits, services, facilities, or accommodations on the basis of race, religion, or
national origin. In cases of a resulting second degree murder, the protected activities offense carries a sentence of
imprisonment for any term of years or for life.
Domestic terrorism: The federal criminal code tdene the term domestic terrorism to encompass those federal or
state crimes, dangerous to human life ... [that] appear to be intended - (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
[or] to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion ... [and that] occur primarily within the ...
United States. Domestic terrorism as such, however, is not a separate federal crime, but an element or aggravating
factor in the case of other crimes, such as port security bribLy in furtherance of domestic terrorism or false staments
for purposes of domestic terrorism. Federal law does feature a number of individual terrorism offenses. Qn_ of these
bans the use of weapons of mass destruction. The commercial airlines that terrorists flew into the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center were L as weapons of mass destruction for purposes of the statute. Whether a court would](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/crsmthmbbxx0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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