White Supremacist Found Guilty of Assaulting DeAndre Harris in Charlottesville

By Casey Michel, ThinkProgress

02 May 18

Jacob Scott Goodwin is facing up to ten years in prison for his assault.

early nine months after racist violence and domestic terror rocked Charlottesville, Virginia, one of the white supremacists involved in the bloodshed has finally received a verdict in his trial.

On Tuesday evening, Jacob Scott Goodwin was found guilty of malicious wounding, with a jury recommending ten years in prison for the 23-year-old. A judge will sentence Goodwin in late August, just over a year after one of Goodwin’s fellow white supremacists killed Heather Heyer and injured over a dozen more with his car after the white supremacist rally.

Goodwin hasn’t gained as much notoriety as some of his fellow white supremacists, like Richard Spencer or Matthew Heimbach, but he shot to infamy after he was captured on tape battering a young black man in a Charlottesville parking garage. Goodwin’s victim, 20-year-old DeAndre Harris, was rounded up by a gang of white supremacists, who then broke Harris’s arm and left him with a spinal injury. Goodwin claimed the beating was in self-defense.

Goodwin, who was wearing a military helmet and plastic shield, was one of at least five men who beat Harris. The white supremacist was also wearing Nazi paraphernalia, as well as a pin with the logo for the Traditionalist Workers Party, a group that recently imploded following news of Heimbach’s affair with his mother-in-law. Goodwin’s parents have stood by their son, with Goodwin’s father recently saying that his son “did nothing wrong."

Goodwin wasn’t the only white supremacist or far-right supporter arrested for bludgeoning Harris. Tyler Davis, Daniel Borden, and Alex Ramos are all facing trial for the assault as well.