Race Jones
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Biden’s DOJ uses a Trump tactic: Federal prosecutors label Black Lives Matter protesters terrorists
This time last year, during the final presidential debate, Joe Biden promised to “fundamentally change” the administration of criminal justice if elected. That change is much needed &md…
www.nydailynews.com
This time last year, during the final presidential debate, Joe Biden promised to “fundamentally change” the administration of criminal justice if elected. That change is much needed — on issues ranging from police misconduct to excessive sentences to racial disparities in arrests, charges and punishment.
A case pending in Brooklyn, however, flies in the face of the president’s stated commitment both to racial justice and righting the wrongs of excessive punishment. Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York are continuing to pursue the Trump-era approach of labeling Black Lives Matter protesters as terrorists.
Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman are two lawyers who were arrested in Brooklyn in May 2020 while protesting for racial justice. (I taught Mattis at NYU Law, but I am not on his defense team.) Mattis and Rahman allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at an empty NYPD car during a night of mass protest after George Floyd’s murder.
FILE- This May 30, 2020 combination of booking photos provided by the United States Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of New York shows Colinford Mattis, left, and Urooj Rahman, both Brooklyn attorneys. (AP)
Mattis and Rahman can hardly be called peaceful protesters; trying to destroy a police car, even if empty, crosses the line. So I am not questioning the decision to bring criminal charges. But the decision to bring federal rather than state charges is a different matter. No one was in the car, and no one was harmed. A case involving this kind of property damage would typically be pursued by a local district attorney, and first-time offenders like Mattis and Rahman would likely receive little if no jail time for their offense.
Instead, federal prosecutors under the Trump administration charged Mattis and Rahman with seven felony counts that collectively carried a 45-year mandatory minimum sentence. Theirs was one of at least 326 federal prosecutions initiated by the Trump DOJ over alleged conduct during the Black Lives Matter protests — but it was one of the earliest and most aggressive of those prosecutions.
This week, Mattis and Rahman will be taking a plea deal to resolve their case. The plea avoids the extreme and indefensible mandatory minimum sentence that attached to the original charges. But prosecutors, even under this new administration, have made clear that they will seek a terrorism enhancement at Mattis and Rahman’s sentencing — an extraordinarily rare and harsh tool that applies only when the offense was “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct” and that the government has historically sought in cases that did, or could have easily, resulted in mass death and destruction.