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.
Fella forgot to quicksave.
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.
I think she deserves a rematch and the chance to teach this idiot a lesson.
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.
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.
This headline reads like a fight card wtf lol
SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY
GET READY FOR THE JUDGE TO LAW DOWN THE LAW
Him at his second court appearance:
Her:
“Eh ehm the leh!”
Is it pay per view?
This is for the belt!
Who gets the PPV money?
It’s not a cage match, sadly.
What happens in Vegas stays on your permanent record.
Judge by DEC
ROUND 2
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
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!
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
Written like someone who received a sentencing from this judge with an axe to grind. How long you in for?
Huh, turns out it was well deserved in this case.
Jesus, psychos everywhere.
