Crime

'Crying Nazi' Banished From Virginia, Which Is Totally Still A Thing

Christopher Cantwell pleaded guilty to two counts of assault.

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(Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Christopher Cantwell is known as the “Crying Nazi” because after assaulting and terrorizing people at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville he cried big, wet, fear tears on Vice News.

Cantwell pleaded guilty to two counts of assault and battery. His sentence was suspended so he won’t serve any additional jail time but… he was also ordered to leave the state of Virginia and not return for five years.

Yeah, the crying Nazi was banished. Exile yo. Cantwell isn’t allowed to go to the Commonwealth of presidents for five years.

Banishment is totally still a thing in some states. It’s probably unconstitutional at the federal level, being exiled from America probably violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. (Somebody PLEASE tell Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions that.) But there are a number of states that still have exile statutes on the books.

Georgia and Mississippi use it most often, but Virginia’s banishment tradition goes all the way back to the 17th Century. In fact, in the seminal case Loving v. Virginia, banishment was the punishment the interracial couple would have been subjected to. The Lovings were sentenced to a year in jail for breaking miscegenation laws, but the sentence was suspended providing that the Lovings left Virginia and did not return for 25 years. Obviously, that sentence was overturned.

I’m not sure how I feel about banishment as a punishment for Nazis. There is something appropriate about it. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” It would certainly be nice if we could just banish all the Nazis.

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But we can’t actually catch and remove all of them… and even if we could our history with forced marches is not good. Is it really a punishment for Cantwell that he can’t agitate for ethnic cleansing in Virginia? Tennessee is right there.

Cantwell is essentially a walking Riddikulus spell. He’s something you can think of to banish the Nazi Boggarts when they scare you. It doesn’t matter where he lives now. He’s already done his service to the forces opposed to white supremacy.

This is why some U.S. judges banish convicts from their home communities [Washington Post]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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