May 30, Colinford Mattis of Pryor Cashman and registered attorney Urooj Rahman were arrested and charged with damaging New York City Police Department vehicles with Molotov cocktails during protests in Brooklyn

A group of 56 former federal prosecutors on Tuesday filed an amicus brief arguing that the government's attempt to keep two lawyers charged in a Molotov cocktail attack on an unoccupied New York City Police Department vehicle would change existing bail practice.

After Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman were arrested May 30, U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie of the Eastern District of New York ruled that they could be released to home confinement with electronic monitoring and a $250,000 bond.

Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York immediately appealed, and Mattis and Rahman returned to jail a few days later when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit granted prosecutors' request for an emergency stay.

Assistant U.S. attorney David Kessler argued that Mattis and Rahman had to be detained because they might cause disorder amid ongoing protests against police brutality in Brooklyn.

He also argued that the factors Brodie weighed in granting their release—she found that both defendants led stable lives with family support, jobs and no criminal history—existed before the alleged attack and did not prevent it.

"The defendants had those very same responsibilities to family members at the time they engaged in the crime with which they have been charged, yet made the calculated decision to put all of this at risk through the conduct that led to their arrests," Kessler wrote in one filing. "The defendants have less to lose now that they are facing lengthy mandatory minimum prison terms and other personal and professional consequences."

In their amicus brief, the former federal prosecutors noted that the Bail Reform Act of 1984 calls on judges to consider, among other factors, the "history and characteristics" of the defendant.

Those factors, by definition, existed prior to the alleged crime, they wrote, and yet they are routinely considered in bail proceedings in district courts.

"If adopted by this Court, the government's argument would, in effect, amount to a per se rule denying bail to any defendant in a case raising a question of dangerousness where the factors supporting bail existed prior to the alleged offense," they wrote.

Emphasizing their collective decades of work on bail issues, the former federal prosecutors warned that the argument should be rejected.

The government's reply brief is due Thursday.

On Wednesday, a group of 650 current and former New York University School of Law students, student organizations, faculty and staff wrote a letter calling for the government to release Rahman and Mattis and drop the charges against them, which the group described as politically motivated.

Mattis graduated from NYU Law and is currently suspended from his job as an associate at Pryor Cashman, which previously furloughed him in connection with the coronavirus pandemic.

Rahman represented low-income tenants in Bronx Housing Court until her arrest, and the NYU letter described the pair as "public interest-oriented attorneys of color and respected community members."

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