Second Molotov Cocktail Lawyer Sentenced to One Year and a Day in Prison

Second Molotov Cocktail Lawyer Sentenced to One Year and a Day in Prison

Colinford Mattis, one of the two ‘Molotov Cocktail Lawyers’ who firebombed a NYC police car during the George Floyd riots, was sentenced this week to one year and a day. His co-defendant Urooj Rahman was sentenced to 15 months in November. Both of them have been disbarred.

Alexander Nazaryan reports at Yahoo News:

Attorney who helped firebomb NYPD car during BLM protests sentenced to prison

In a dramatic hearing on Thursday, a federal judge sentenced a corporate attorney who firebombed a police car during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests to a year in jail, arguing that his prestigious education — boarding school, Princeton, a law degree from New York University — should have rendered him a peacekeeper, not an instigator.

“You’re not one of the oppressed. You’re one of the privileged,” senior Eastern District of New York Judge Brian Cogan told Colinford Mattis, even as he expressed admiration for what the 35-year-old had accomplished in his life.

The sentencing marked the culmination of a two-and-a-half-year legal battle that saw Mattis and his co-defendant, Urooj Rahman, become symbols of the nation’s political tumult and divisions. Spanning two presidential administrations, their case saw competing imperatives play out in public and in the courtroom, as well as in the media.

To the Heritage Foundation they were “terrorists,” while New York magazine allowed that they could be seen as “civil-rights heroes, even martyrs.” The Daily Mail called them “woke lawyers.” In the pages of the New York Times, they were described by a guest contributor as victims of “deeply ingrained injustices.”

Nazaryan’s article then devolves into pure politics, arguing typical left wing talking points about the dangers of far-right extremism and presenting this case a rare example of progressives becoming violent:

In succumbing to anger at a time of profound division, fear and isolation, the two were perhaps no different from many other Americans who see no meaningful outlet for their frustration at what they see as society’s misguided direction. Political violence remains rare, but it is rising. For the most part, the perpetrators are far-right extremists. In this case, the malefactors were progressives, which may be why the case gained national attention.

Professor Jacobson obtained the sentencing documents. In the first, the crime is laid out in plain language:

In the early morning hours of May 29, 2020, just hours after the Minneapolis Third Precinct stationhouse was overrun and burned by rioters, Mattis and Rahman used a separate group chat to discuss the use of weapons and violence to pursue social change. In their discussion, Rahman expressed the view that “all the police stations” and “probably all the courts” “need[ed]” to be burned down.

Over the course of the evening, Rahman and Mattis sent many group chat messages in which they, among other things: discussed the burning of Minneapolis’s Third Precinct; expressed support for burning police stations and One Police Plaza, the headquarters of the NYPD; detailed acts of violence and property damage targeting the NYPD, including the use of fireworks and Molotov cocktails (improvised incendiary devices) to set fires; encouraged others to engage in violence; mocked reportedly injured police officers; and disparaged law enforcement generally, writing “Fuck 12” and referring to police officers as “pigs.”

In this one, you can see that Mattis was seeking a sentence of time served:

In Mr. Mattis’s main submission we explained why a sentence of time served is sufficient in this case. The government’s sentencing submission does not show otherwise. Instead, it largely recycles its analysis of the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors that it applied to Ms. Rahman. But Mr. Mattis is not Ms. Rahman.

These two got off lucky. Under Trump, the DOJ wanted to send them to prison for decades. They were saved by the 2020 election.

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