Inside the Trial of Jacob Dix, a Peaceful Charlottesville Protester

Jacob Dix (right) at the torchlight march on August 11, 2017.

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The case of Jacob Dix, who has been charged with “using fire to intimidate” during the torch march at the University of Virginia (UVA) campus in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11, 2017, the night before the Unite the Right rally, has ended in a mistrial after the jury was unable to come to a unanimous verdict. This was the most significant setback yet for the George Soros-backed Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney Jim Hingeley and his antifa assistant Lawton Tufts, men who decided to pursue charges against peaceful protesters six years after the fact for political reasons.

No evidence was presented that Dix assaulted anyone or used his torch for anything other than presenting the message of the political demonstration he was involved in, which opposed the replacement of whites and their history throughout the West. The entire case was presented as an opportunity to put Dix on trial for the Second World War and anti-Semitism since a minority of the protesters had chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” The prosecution called Diane D’Acosta, who is brown but identifies as Jewish, to say that she had heard chanting from her dorm room on the UVA lawn and was afraid.

“I’m literally putting sheets on my mattress, and I hear a guttural, angry, rhythmic chant of ‘You will not replace us,’” said D’Costa. “It turned into ‘Jews will not replace us.’” It’s unclear how one might figuratively or metaphorically put sheets on their mattress. Regardless, D’Acosta went on to testify about hiding a painting of a Star of David in her dormitory.

Source: Diane D’Costa’s Instagram profile.

Classic crybully tactics: acting like a victim while begging the state to lock up your political rivals.

The prosecution also called James Loeffler, a radical Leftist Jewish professor from Johns Hopkins University, to testify about Nazi Germany. Needless to say, everything that happened in Nazi Germany occurred almost a century before the Unite the Right rally took place. No one at the rally, including Dix, fought in the Second World War or was a member of the Nazi Party. They were American citizens utilizing their right to protest. The testimony’s only relevance was to attempt to instill prejudice in the jurors’ minds against the defendant.

Most unwisely of all, the prosecution called antifa transsexual Edward “Emily” Gorcenski to the stand, perhaps believing all the glowing mainstream media portrayals of this twisted individual. They had certainly seen none of my research on him that has been accumulated at VDARE, my personal website, and my recently-released book, Charlottesville and the Death of Free Speech.

Gorcenski, who was in attendance with other antifa militants during the torch protest, denounced Dix and claimed to be a non-violence advocate. Although Judge H. Thomas Padrick only allowed two out of the four tweets by Gorcenski I had archived to be admitted into evidence, they were devastating, including one where he tweeted, “I’m not against violence, by all means punch the Nazi, burn a cop car.” In the other tweet, Gorcenski boasted, “I literally *pulled a fucking gun* on August 12.”

Gorcenski put his foot in his mouth by volunteering the fact that he’d been contacted by the FBI on the night of August 11, as agents were concerned that he was planning violence against the torch march. This opened up a series of damaging questions on a topic prosecutors would have preferred to avoid.

After cross-examination, the usually aggressive Gorcenski, complained on social media about being in “pain town” after getting “beat up” on the stand. He expressed that he feared — correctly — that his testimony had hurt the prosecution.

The case was tried in Albemarle Circuit Court but prosecuted by Henrico County Commonwealth Attorney Shannon Taylor. The reason for this mismatch was due to the explosive and rare recusals of both a judge and the entire Albemarle County Commonwealths Attorney’s office over undisclosed conflicts.

Evidence uncovered by Dix’s attorney, Peter Frazier, and myself showed that Judge Claude Worrell and his family were witnesses to the events of the case, and his wife, an antifa activist named Kathryn Laughon, had been publicly calling for the defendants to be prosecuted. Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Lawton Tufts, who led the charge on the torch cases, was an activist for Black Lives Matter as well as antifa groups that had been hoping to disrupt the Unite the Right protests in 2017.

MISTRIAL! 🎉

Jacob Dix is a free man tonight after jurors fail to convict him for peacefully protesting while carrying a tiki torch (an American and European tradition).

How FUCKING embarassing for the Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney. 😂 #Charlottesville pic.twitter.com/XFd3ul8Bhn

— Jason Kessler (@TheMadDimension) June 6, 2024

A juror poll revealed how the all-white jury of five women and seven men voted: eight voted not guilty, three guilty, and one was undecided. Although double jeopardy does not apply during a mistrial, and Taylor has already indicated that she will attempt to retry the case, the jury’s split should cause her to rethink the wisdom of following this path deeper into a quagmire.

Another potential hurdle for a retrial is a motion hearing scheduled for August 22. Attorney Frazier filed a number of motions to dismiss the charges prior to trial. Judge Padrick ruled against some but three are still active, including one arguing the unconstitutional vagueness of the charges against Dix.

Some excerpts:

The law has no precedent in English common law . . . Dix and his codefendants are the first people ever charged under this law.

§18.2-423.01 has at least two fatal defects that render a common man unable to know what conduct it prohibits: 1.) It is unclear what it means to “burn an object” in this context; and 2.) it is unclear how one, with the intent to intimidate, uses a burning object to put someone in fear of death or bodily harm. As applied to our case, the statute is too vague to inform a common man whether carrying a tiki torch in public violates the terms thereof.

The defense might have preferred for Judge Padrick to rule on the constitutionality of the charge before trial, but he declined to do so. Now that he has seen the scant evidence presented against Dix (he was literally merely standing still with a lit torch), and the unwillingness of a jury to secure a conviction, perhaps Padrick will be more likely to end the legal process before more time and money are wasted on a retrial.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s Toward a New Nationalism here.

I spoke with Dix by phone, and his spirits are high. He recounted a story demonstrating the prosecution’s growing desperation. After failing to secure a verdict, they offered Dix a plea deal to take a misdemeanor with time served. Dix turned them down without a second thought. “I would rather have a felony record than give them permission to go after 300 of my comrades for peacefully protesting,” Dix told me.

Dix’s attitude is valiant, yet sober. It’s true that prosecutors have been preying on men without hearts for risk or struggle, willing to plead guilty to things they didn’t do rather than risk jail time and legal expenses. Many of the guilty pleas came after bond had been denied to men with no prior criminal records by the conflicted and recently-recused Judge Worrell. Dix is the first man with the bravery to face the risk. He is the bulwark against the government merely steamrolling every man who attended the August 11 protest.

Dix’s case was and is the bellwether for all the others. He has the best chance to beat it, too: the indefatigable defense of attorney Frazier and Dix’s striking good looks and friendly disposition represent an uncharacteristic surprise coming from a movement of mostly dour men who have been forced to endure smears and unjust persecution from the law for their political ideals.

In this context, a mistrial is absolutely a victory. Not a total one, but it is a significant political, logistical, and public relations defeat for prosecutors with designs on arresting hundreds of non-violent marchers in order to appease crybully Left-wing activists.

Jason Kessler is the author of Charlottesville and the Death of Free Speech, available now from Dissident Press. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, Odysee, and Gab. Also follow Dissident Press on Twitter/X. We follow you back!