The two Brooklyn lawyers accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail into a police car during a protest early Saturday morning are set to be released from federal lockup after a judge approved bond for the pair in court hearings Monday.
Judge Steven Gold approved $250,000 bond for both Brooklyn community board member Colinford Mattis, 32, and his alleged accomplice, 31-year-old Urooj Rahman — despite strenuous objections from federal prosecutors.
Both Mattis and Rahman will be subject to home confinement and their family and friends who have offered to post the bond will be held responsible for paying if the lawyers jump bail, Gold said at the hearings.
An appeal of the decision by federal prosecutors in a separate court hearing Monday evening was shot down by another judge.
The prosecutor who argued he be kept in prison said Mattis “risked everything to drive around in a car with Molotov cocktails attacking police vehicles.”
“That is not the action of a rational person,” he added.
In Rahman’s hearing, the prosecutor said with uprisings happening across the city right now, it’s not the time to release a “bomb thrower” into the community.
“She pursued a career in which she would uphold the law, but everything she’s done as detailed in the complaint is contrary to that,” the prosecutor said.
“She threw away her career in the law when she threw that Molotov cocktail at a New York City police vehicle,” he added.
Mattis, a graduate of Princeton University and the New York University School of Law, is an associate at corporate Manhattan firm Pryor Cashman who has been on furlough since April, according to the firm.
Rahman is also registered as an attorney in New York state, who was admitted to the bar in June 2019 after graduating from Fordham University School of Law.
Defense attorneys for both lawyers stressed their legal backgrounds and education at prestigious universities as evidence neither of them would be a threat to the community if released.
Rahman allegedly tossed the explosive device into a cop car while the two were driving around Brooklyn Friday night and Saturday morning during a tense confrontation between police and demonstrators near the 88th Precinct station house in Fort Greene.
Prosecutors said in a detention memo that they were trying to pass out the bombs to protesters at the demonstration.