Ex-Marine Is 11th (And Possibly Last) Man Convicted for 2017 March at UVA

Two years after the first wave of indictments were unsealed and announced, what appears to be the last of 12 men charged for participating in the racist, torch-wielding mob that marched across the University of Virginia the night before the deadly Unite the Right rally-turned-riot in Charlottesville has been convicted.

After 2 1/2 days of testimony and arguments, an Albemarle County jury came back after less than three hours of deliberations with a guilty verdict against Vasillios George Pistolis, a 26-year-old resident of Charlotte, North Carolina.

He was convicted of using fire to racially intimidate, a felony based on a never-before-used statute enacted more than 20 years ago.

“It was a superb effort by the prosecution team, Lawton Tufts and Henry McGuire,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley, who sat in the gallery throughout the trial, told The Daily Progress {snip}

By contrast, Pistolis’ mother expressed outrage.

“My son’s being put away for something stupid,” said Vivi Pistolis. “Would I be put in jail for carrying a torch down the street?”

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At trial, Tufts, the lead prosecutor, repeatedly emphasized that a torch alone does not constitute racial intimidation. And while he presented evidence of the defendant’s racist statements, Tufts said that it was only when some of the roughly 400 torch-bearers surrounded a group of about 30 counterprotesters that such conduct became illegal.

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Pistolis’ lawyer, Richmond-based Paul Galanides, was defeated in pretrial motions from arguing that the state statute was unconstitutional and too-belatedly prosecuted. Still, he alleged in closing that his client was getting persecuted for his speech.

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“Not only has that previously untested statute been upheld as a way to hold members of the torch mob accountable for the harm they caused on August 11, 2017,” Hingeley asserted in his statement, “but the outcome of the case also sends a strong message to other white supremacists that Albemarle County does not tolerate this kind of criminal conduct.”

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Outside of court, Pistolis, who already got drummed out of the Marine Corps for his participation in Unite the Right and affiliation with a widely derided extremist group called Atomwaffen, seemed angry.

“I now lost my job, and my dad’s dying of cancer,” Pistolis told The Daily Progress. “How am I going to pay for chemotherapy for my dad?”

Hingeley’s office has won each case that it prosecuted, though some charges were settled with misdemeanor pleas. The one case without a conviction was overseen by a special prosecutor from Henrico County and dropped after the jury deadlocked.

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