The two lawyers charged with throwing a Molotov Cocktail at a police car during the George Floyd riots in New York have now been disbarred.
Most people believed this is what should happen, but in our current environment, it seems somewhat surprising that it actually did happen.
Reuters reports:
N.Y. disbars lawyers who threw Molotov cocktail at police car during George Floyd protestsAttorney regulators in New York on Tuesday disbarred two lawyers who pleaded guilty to throwing a Molotov cocktail at an empty city police car during protests over George Floyd’s death.New York’s Appellate Division, First Department said Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman qualified for automatic disbarment based on their guilty pleas in June.Although the court’s order was released Tuesday, it retroactively dated the start of their disbarment to June 2, when Mattis and Rahman admitted in Brooklyn federal court to conspiracy to commit arson and possess an explosive device.Mattis and Rahman told U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan at the time that they understood they would lose their law licenses as a result of their guilty pleas.Rahman represented tenants in the Bronx as a public interest lawyer. Mattis worked as an associate at law firm Pryor Cashman, but was furloughed in April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The firm suspended him after his arrest.
Mattis is set to be sentenced later this month, and Rahman in December. At one point, it looked as though they were going to get a light, two-year sentence, but who knows?
Another woman found guilty of a similar crime during the same riots just got six years.
New York Daily News reports:
Upstate New York woman gets 6 years for tossing Molotov cocktail at NYPD during George Floyd protest in BrooklynA woman who tossed a Molotov cocktail at an NYPD van with four cops inside in Brooklyn during the 2020 George Floyd protests was sentenced to six years behind bars Tuesday.Samantha Shader, 29, pleaded guilty in April to a federal arson charge for turning a Bulleit bourbon bottle into a makeshift firebomb on May 29, 2020, that she hurled near Eastern Parkway and Washington Ave. in Crown Heights.“Get out of my motherf—-g way,” the woman from upstate Saugerties yelled before the throw, which was caught on video.The bottle broke the van’s window, but the fluid inside, which the feds describe as acetone or nail polish remover, didn’t ignite, and the four officers were spared a fiery fate.When NYPD officers arrested her, she bit one of them in the leg.
I’m not a lawyer, but isn’t that a legal precedent?
Shouldn’t the Molotov lawyers get the same sentence?
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