Man sentenced to eight years for Charlottesville beating

A white supremacist convicted of being part of a group of men that beat a black man in a Virginia parking garage during a “Unite the Right” rally last year in Charlottesville was sentenced on Thursday to eight years in prison, local media reported.

Jacob Goodwin, 23, one of three men convicted or pleading guilty to the beating, was sentenced by a Charlottesville Circuit Court judge, WVIR-TV in Charlottesville and others reported.

Court officials and the Charlottesville prosecutor were not immediately available for comment. As of Thursday afternoon, online court records did not include a sentence.

Another co-defendant, Alex Ramos, is set to be sentenced later on Thursday by the same judge, the TV station said. The final man charged in the beating, Daniel Borden, pleaded guilty in May and is set for sentencing in October, court records showed.

Goodwin, who said he acted in self-defense, was convicted by a jury in May. He has said in an interview with the NBC TV network that he belongs to a white nationalist group in Arkansas.

DeAndre Harris, 20, suffered a broken arm and a spinal injury in the attack, which took place when there was a rally by white nationalists in the Virginia city. Harris can be seen in a video of the incident being beaten with poles and kicked while he is on the ground.

At the same “Unite the Right” rally, a man drove a car into a group of demonstrators protesting against white nationalists, killing a woman. James Fields faces murder and hate crime charges in forthcoming trials in that incident.

Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Frank McGurty and Peter Cooney