COLINFORD MATTIS & UROOJ RAHMAN reach a plea agreement. June 2020 Molotov Cocktail Attacks on NYPD Vehicles
And your bonus waves hiya…Samantha Shader I don’t think she’s reached a plea agreement. Also bonus fact files of the inequities and disproportionate lethality of Black or Brown Americans
Retrospectively the entire arch of these two Criminal Cases, made for an interesting case(s) to follow. Notwithstanding it is important to remember that the actions taken by the Defendants, they occurred during the Summer of 2020. The previous sentence should not be misconstrued as me condoning violence against law enforcement and/or destruction of property.
Millions of Americans watched in abject horror, as police officers pressed their knees into George Floyd. Nine minutes and Twenty-Five seconds, which is five hundred and sixty five seconds. Convicted Murderer Chauvin literally and figuratively squeezed the life out of Mr Floyd.
Know Their Names —millions of Americans began marching, protesting and vocalization of their pain, frustration and exacerbation of how the racial inequities coupled with the disproportionate lethality of non-white Americans. . According to a June 2020 study/research by Harvard T.H. Chan School of public health;
…Black Americans are 3.23 times more likely than white Americans to be killed by police…
Of the included 5494 fatalities involving police from 2013–2017, researchers also aggregated that subset of data within the universe of the data collected for the June 2020 Report, which reads in part:
2353 (42.83%) of the decedents were White,
1487 (27.07%) were Black,
939 were Latinx (17.09%), and
168 (3.06%) were other race/ethnicities
547 lacked data on race/ethnicity.
The June 2020 Harvard Report/Study further aggregated the data, researchers went on to mapped out the data and then identified geographical “regions”
Nationally, from our first set of models, the annual rate of fatal police violence was 0.39 per 100,000 (95% Confidence Interval [CI] = 0.37,0.42);
overall and race-specific rates varied from MSA to MSA:
overall rates ranged from 0.13 (CI = 0.03,0.56) fatalities per 100,000 in Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls, NY to 1.17/100,000 (CI = 0.28,4.99) in Anniston-Oxford-Jacksonville, AL..
meaning the most lethal MSA exhibited rates nine times those of the least lethal
The Report/Study Annual incidence rates of fatalities involving police per 100,000 and 95% CIs for MSAs with the highest incidence rates, 2013–2017. Be
And the unfortunate reality is, some of the protest became violent and caused significant damage to property. Which now brings us to 👇🏻
Defendants COLINFORD MATTIS & UROOJ RAHMAN
To help you better navigate the various Court filings —I took the liberty of pulling down the various filings 2. Also in order to streamline the reading flow, and my endeavors to provide you with open sourced links (mainly to my Scribd and Google Drive) I’ve zeroed in on what I think are important and embedded those open source links to the footnotes. Generally speaking the regular order of business aka judicial housekeeping matters —those filings really are not that newsworthy. Conversely the mandatory minimum for conviction on all counts was 45 years in prison - hence let’s drill down on the Motion to Dismiss Counts 1 thru 5…which was filed earlier this month.
On September 22, 2021 it was reported that Defendants MATTIS and RAHMAN reached a plea deal to resolve allegations in connection with a Molotov cocktail attack. Which resulted in significant damaged to an unoccupied New York City police car…
Lawyers Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman will avoid a mandatory minimum sentence by pleading guilty to one count of possessing or making a destructive device, according to Rahman’s lawyer, Paul Shechtman. They face a maximum potential sentence of 10 years in prison.
At the time of publication the Plea Agreement nor a Change in Plea hearing have hit the docket. However absent those aforementioned being filed, there are some existing facts that corroborate a Plea Agreement (might) have been hammered out.
Indictment was a Seven Count Indictment
And yes I do understand that it might be difficult for some to process my frenetic writing style which tends to hyper focus on tiny details and actual facts. As previously mentioned it was a seven count indictment and I’d like for you to remember Counts 6 and 7. Especially when reading the Defendants recent Motion to Dismiss Counts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the indictment.
Furthermore if you read the Law.com article the Defense attorney proffered that the Defendant’s previously filed Motion to Dismiss will be “paused” until the Court accepts the Defendants guilty pleas on Count Six and Seven, respectively.
Count Six: Charges the defendants with Civil Unrest in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§231(a)(3), 2 and 3551 4
Count Seven: Charges the Defendants with Possessing and Making a Destructive Device, in violation of 26 U.S.C. 5861(d) and 5861(f)…
Motion to Dismiss Counts 1 thru 5
I’d now like to draw page 2 of attached Memorandum of Support - the basic premise of the Defendant’s Argument is; the NYPD did not use any federal funds to purchase the police cruiser that the Defendant(s) set ablaze with a Molotov Cocktail.
Dismissal of Count One
..section 844(f), properly construed, is “limited to property owned or possessed using federal financial assistance,” and therefore does not reach the auxiliary police vehicle at issue in this case…
…the question in Hersom, as here, was whether applying section 844(f) to any property of an organization “receiving Federal financial assistance” was a permissible exercise of Congress’s power under that Clause…
On the balance this is an interesting argument —because as the Defendant points out (because the two cited cases and a plain reading of Section 844(f) ..does not articulate any prerequisite “minimum amount of federal assistance to trigger federal jurisdiction” ← which is more important than you would think. Largely because the defendant’s argument zeroes in on “the scope” and that if the Court ignores the precedence firmly established under Hersom, 588 F.3d at 67, (citing) Jones, 529 U.S. at 857…then the breadth of what could trigger Federal Funding would be wildly sweeping and could unsettle numerous precedences… also read the footnote on page 4 closely.
The subtext of the Defendant’s argument concerning the Dismissal of Count one, specifically footnote #2 —the 1stCCOAs upheld the District Court’s conviction because the Government showed that a $50,000 loan from the City of Lewiston originated through the HUD block grant…therefore Federal Jurisdiction was proper…
…Restraint in interpretation, not wishful thinking, is called for in such circumstances…
Essentially the Defendant argues that Section 844(f) should be construed in a very narrow way because the possibility is if the interruption is broader than what Congress intended, well Pandora’s Box opens. Hence why on Page 5 the Defendant proffers numerous hypothetical situations. To be fair I think those hypotheticals are largely conclusory and the argument made by the Defendant isn’t as elegant or persuasive as it should be. But then again it’s easy for me to critique an argument because that’s kind of what I do for an actual living. Notwithstanding the Defendant really does summarize their argument as to the dismissal of Count One rather succinctly in their closing paragraph
Dismissal of Count Two:
Here the defendant attempt to cobble together yet another novel argument. The non-legalese of the argument is; the Defendant states that the Molotov Cocktail did not impede interstate commerce because the patrol car was out-of-service… “is a paradigmatic common-law state crime.” and oddly footnote five, which reads in part:
If a vehicle were found to be used in an activity affecting interstate commerce simply because it belonged to a police department, then any arson directed at any police property would be a federal crime. Setting fire to a police barrier, a police surveillance camera affixed to a street corner pole, or even a police officer’s hat would violate §844(i).
I now refer you to page 9 - read what I’ve highlighted closely. To be fair I’m not a fan of using an argument to diminish the criminal culpability. The “police cruiser was badly damaged, before the Molotov Cocktail was thrown” isn’t exactly a strong or well plead argument. However in the context of effectuating interstate commerce… you have to read the statute and the facts argued.
Count Three;
In non-legalese what the Defendant argues is, sloppy language used in the statute and the case cited (United States v. Konopka, 409 F.3d 837 (7th Cir. 2005),) is an excellent example because in Konopka the following argument/question changed the trajectory of that case:
“why would Congress want the use of fire to enhance the punishment for using fire?”
Section 844(h) reflects the view of Congress that fire (or the use of explosives, which is also covered by the section), is especially dangerous because it can so easily get out of hand and cause widespread destruction and that therefore felonies effected by means of fire should be punished more severely than felonies effected by other means. But the heavy federal penalty for arson, see 18 U.S.C. §844(i) (5 to 20 years even if no one is injured), is based on precisely the same idea -- that fire is abnormally dangerous. The policy of section 844(h) is . . . embodied . . . in the arson statute, so that the government’s position amounts to arguing that in enacting that section Congress intended to increase the sentence for arson by 10 years.
If you are wondering why I am drawing your attention to the various arguments from the Defendant - well in my opinion (again it’s not factually based, per se) the Defendants have hitched their wagon to the “selective prosecution” argument and that under the Bill Barr/Donald Trump DOJ —the Government sought out the most severe statutes to send a message to BLM and Antifa… again that’s my opinion and you are free to disagree with me…but before you do I’d like you to read page 11… note the mandatory minimum sentence (five years plus ten) I genuinely think this is a very well articulated argument by the Defendant:
Count Four…
In short the Defendant argues that if they are correct about Count Two, then dismissing Count Four is the logical end point. Because Count Two and Four are intertwined and if Two goes then so should Four.
Count Five
This is where we come full circle because here the Defendant doubles down on their argument that “no federal funds were used to purchase the auxiliary NYPD cruiser” and therefore;
A defective predicate is no predicate at all..
To be clear I find the minimization of the Defendants actions unsavory —conversely I can be intellectually honest enough to say the Defense really does make numerous well grounded arguments
…in Borden, the Supreme Court held that a “crime of violence” includes “purposeful and knowing acts but excludes reckless conduct.”..
United States v. Roof, 2021 WL 3746805, at *58 (4th Cir.)(the statute “must also indicate a higher degree of [mens rea] than reckless, negligent, or merely accidental conduct in order to satisfy the elements clause”).That reduces the question here to this: does §844(f)(1) reach reckless conduct such that it is not a “crime of violence” and therefore cannot serve as a predicate for a §924(c) offense?
And that’s largely my predicate for stating the Defendant’s argument comes full circle —as further elucidated on page 1 of the Memorandum of Law
Rahman and Mattis were initially arrested by New York City police officers on state charges but were transferred to federal custody later that morning. What followed was the seven count federal indictment at issue here. Five of the seven counts carry mandatory minimum prison terms, the greatest of which (Count Five) is 30 years. This motion challenges the validity of those five counts. As we hope to show, the government set out to find those charges that carry the most severe punishment, but, in doing so, selected charges that do not pass muster.
So what next? Well that is kind of easy, we wait to see the Plea Agreement. As always if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to respond in a timely and factual manner.
The last docket activity occurred on August 11, 2021 STATUS REPORT by Samantha Shader -read5 what I highlighted closely because the possibility here is Co-Defendants Mattis and Rahman might (operative word until we actually see the plea agreement) cut a deal with the Government to testify against Defendant Shader. Note the tick-tock of discovery, expert witnesses, reports and..
…both parties are available for a hearing on a date after September 27, if the court is amenable to the requested adjournment.
Although Defendant Shader might also be in earnest negotiations for a plea agreement -as further affirmed by the Court’s August 17, 2021 Order which reads in part:
The status conference is adjourned toOctober 5, 2021 at 12:00 noon in courtroom 4 A South. An order of excludable delay is entered with the defendant's consent between August 18, 2021 and October 5, 2021, due to ongoing plea negotiations,
As always if you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to respond in a timely and factual manner
ps -don’t most people use their lunchtime reading and writing… I’m kidding also I’m in the process of uploading the other documents in this case to my Scribd Account so you might want to periodically check and see or you can pay for the filings via the embedded ECF links
“Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.”
Also see DOJ Section 242 of Title 18 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
You're so amazing! I learn so much by reading your analyses, Filey. There's MUCH I don't understand, but even getting the gist has illuminated our legal process for me. TY!!!
Thank you!
You're so amazing! I learn so much by reading your analyses, Filey. There's MUCH I don't understand, but even getting the gist has illuminated our legal process for me. TY!!!