Firebombing Attorney Begs for Light Sentence, Citing Inebriation and ‘Unprocessed Trauma’
Urooj Rahman was ‘quite drunk’ during George Floyd riots, court filings show
Urooj Rahman Josh Christenson • September 29, 2022 4:59 am
A left-wing lawyer who pleaded guilty to firebombing a police cruiser is asking for a commutation of her sentence, pointing to the fact that she was inebriated at the time of the offense and coping with “unprocessed trauma,” according to court filings.
Attorneys for Urooj Rahman argue the self-described human-rights activist was “numb, disassociated, and inebriated” when she threw a Molotov cocktail into a New York City police car during the George Floyd riots in May 2020. Lawyers say Rahman was also reeling from her many “abusive partnership relationships” and processing “early trauma” from being taunted as a Muslim after 9/11.
On the night of May 29, 2020, Rahman “became quite drunk” after drinking vodka on “an empty stomach” with fellow lawyer and later getaway driver Colinford Mattis. Rahman’s attorneys say the pair’s decision to firebomb an NYPD cruiser was an “aberrational” act meant to protect others from future police violence.
“Tossing the Molotov cocktail was a way of expressing anger at those police officers around the country for whom Black lives did not matter,” Rahman’s attorneys wrote in a September memo to U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan. “It was an act of protest intended to avoid exposing others to harm.”
Rahman’s attorneys have requested she be released on “time served,” saying “her conduct that night was a marked deviation from her otherwise exemplary life.”
The request for a special dispensation builds on a sweetheart deal already reached by Justice Department prosecutors in the case. In June, Rahman and Mattis entered into a second plea agreement that broke their potential 10-year sentences down to a maximum of 5 years. Prosecutors want Judge Cogan to go even lower, arguing for just 18 to 24 months based on the “history and personal characteristics of the defendants.”
Rahman and Mattis each confessed to counts of conspiracy to commit arson and to making and possessing an unregistered destructive device, dodging a previous domestic terrorism
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