Defendant who attacked judge in wild courtroom video will face her again in Las Vegas

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 263 points – Defendant who attacked judge in wild courtroom video will face her again in Las Vegas
apnews.com

A defendant who was captured in courtroom video leaping over a judge’s bench and attacking her, touching off a bloody brawl, is scheduled to appear before her again Monday morning.

In his Jan. 3 appearance before Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus, Deobra Redden, who was facing prison time for a felony battery charge stemming from a baseball bat attack last year, tried to convince the judge that he was turning around his violent past.

Redden asked for leniency while describing himself as “a person who never stops trying to do the right thing no matter how hard it is.”

But when it became clear Holthus was going to sentence him to prison time, and as the court marshal moved to handcuff and take him into custody, Redden yelled expletives and charged forward. People in the courtroom audience, including his foster mother, began to scream.

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How can the judge who has been attached not be disqualified from ruling in that case?

You don't want people to be able to ditch judges they don't like through means of violence.

She's not ruling on her own assault, she's finishing the original sentencing which was interrupted when he launched at her.

So her decision on sentencing was already decided, she just never got to announce what it was. His subsequent behavior proves that sentencing is the correct course of action.

Edit As expected:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/us/las-vegas-judge-attacker-sentenced.html

"sentenced the man on Monday to 19 to 48 months in prison on a previous battery charge, emphasizing that his actions last week did not affect her sentencing decision."

and:

"On Monday, Mr. Redden returned to Judge Holthus’s courtroom to complete the sentencing hearing that his violent outburst had interrupted."

and:

"Judge Holthus emphasized that Mr. Redden was being sentenced solely on an April 2023 battery charge, to which he had previously pleaded guilty. She said any charges related to his attack last week would be handled by a different judge.

“For purposes of the record,” Judge Holthus said, “I want to make it clear that I am not changing or modifying the sentence I was in the process of imposing last week before I was interrupted by defendant’s actions.”"

Ahh... I thought she would rule on his subsequent assault charge

Not necessarily. If they actually were reformed and the judge wasn't hearing it, the sentencing wasn't correct.

I think she deserves a rematch and the chance to teach this idiot a lesson.

Can't imagine another judge being excited to deal with this guy, maybe she's the only one with a score to settle

I score to settle means that she will most likely be unable to rule impartially. This increases the chances of her ruling being found cruel and unusual, thereby increasing the chances of a successful appeal.

Would it influence the judge? Maybe, but modern jurisprudence strongly disfavors anything that enables litigants to choose their own tribunal. The question of whether the American legal system does a good job of that notwithstanding, the problem is that if you enable a defendant to get another roll of the judge dice by assaulting the first assigned judge, you've created a perverse incentive to assault court personnel in a non-zero amount of cases. You don't want to allow for the possibility of rewarding a defendant for bad behavior. Consider:

Capital defendant is on trial for murder. The first judge they draw is strongly in favor of the extreme penalty. The alternative with a different judge would be life--maybe even with the possibility of parole, depending on the jurisdiction. If convicted, the sentence for assaulting a judge is always going to be less than death. Ergo, if you're the defendant in this case and have the opportunity to assault the judge, knowing that doing so gets you a new judge, then rationally you should assault the judge. Courts generally expect litigants to be rational. That is, if the penalty for x is less than the risk value of y, a reasonable litigant will do x, even if x is jumping over the bench to take a swing at the judge.

That's no good, and it's not a new phenomenon. Usually this kind of "forum selection legal game theory" applies in questions wherein a litigant has the choice to initiate an action before one of a number of courts, and forum (and judge) shopping is a major topic in legal academia. [It's not an accident that Aileen Cannon is Trump's judge of choice.]

All of that said, should this judge recuse herself? Personally I don't think so, for the aforesaid reasons, but I also don't want to give the impression that it's cut and dry. Being pragmatic, many judges wouldn't want the hassle of being personally invested in this kind of debate. Some might stand on the principle (and they would be right), but in my experience, most judges would rather take a punch in the face than be reversed on appeal.

That makes a lot of sense. I guess she should stay.

Because that’s not what impartial means. Impartial doesn’t mean dispassionate, hardly any judge sits a bench and not feel something about at least ten percent of their cases.

Impartial means not allowing that emotion to be the main driver. Judges and juries are not robots and the Court system takes this facet into account in appeals.

But, if some dude had jumped at you like a flying squirrel, attacking you and pulling out some of your hair, do you think that you’d be able to make any determinations about that individual without emotion?

She should recuse herself since she’s once of his assault victims.

She had already determined the sentencing, she just needs to deliver it without getting beaten up. If any defendant could get a new judge by assaulting the one assigned, it would bring in a new era of judge shopping.

do you think that you’d be able to make any determinations about that individual without emotion?

Yeah. It comes with being a sociopath. Have you met lawyers?

I think he needs a good long stay in prison. He's already a convicted felon and this just proved he's not fit to be in society. The judge is well within her rights to sentence him to life if she chooses.

I think he deserves life in prison as well, but that should be sentenced by another judge.

Again you're mistaking what impartial means. It does not mean zero emotion, it means that emotions cannot be the primary factor.

The judge is a human being, expecting zero emotion is not having a real world view of the court system. Human beings, that feel emotion dictate justice for other human beings. Justice is not an innate construct of the universe, it exists merely as an idea within our mind and nothing more.

There is no such thing as absolute objective justice nor is there absolute subjective justice. It is a balance and each step of the way in the system is to ensure that balance. But there's no magic string of words that instruct how to keep that balance, it's just up to the minds of those that preserve justice to do such.

Watch the whole video she smiles all smugly and says "I think he needa a taste of something more" She could have just read the sentence instead of trying to be all cute and bitchy with that smile. She deserved it. These judges lock people away for LIFE and then go have lunch and golf together about time they realize they can face consequences for being unreasonable. Shouldnt have smiled and acted like a smug bitch

On your recommendation, I did watch the video. Your bar for calling someone a “smug bitch” is alarmingly low.

I wouldn’t say that was a “smile”, either.

Dude is a repeat offender who's already been treated with kid gloves by the system, and makes the genius-level call to violently attack his judge... and that's your takeaway? Fucker deserves a nice vacation behind bars - and now he's gonna get it.

Doesn’t matter you don’t get to attack someone because they’re smug. He needs to be locked up and pacified.

He has 12 prior convictions, including 3 felonies and 9 misdemeanors, most of them from acts of violence. Dude seriously needs to learn to temper himself.

Dude seriously needs to learn to temper himself

The American prison system will be a greeeeeat place to do that!

Our willingness to punish people instead of helping them knows no bounds. We're #1 for prison population in the world in both percentage of population and in absolute numbers. Take that, China!

The US culture is just crushingly harmful and abusive.

If parents teach kids well, society will not have to ditch out such punishment

Written like someone who received a sentencing from this judge with an axe to grind. How long you in for?

Wow, can't believe you're defending this animal. He was a convicted felon on trial for a different felony, any normal person would pass judgement

Huh, turns out it was well deserved in this case.